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" LECTURES 

ON THE 

dLORY OF COLUMBIA; 

EMBRACING 

A SUCCINCT ACCOUNT OF NUMEROUS EVENTS 

FROM 

THE LANDING OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 

UP TO THE FIIX3SE9TT TXIME, 

THE AVHOLE INTERSPERSED WITH 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE LIVES AND ACTIONS 

OF 
ILLUSTRIOUS SOLDIERS OF TUB REVOLUTIONARY AND LAST WARS, 

ALSO, 

OF A JVUilIBER OF Ei?lI]VE]¥T CIVILIAIVS 

WHO HAVE FLOURISHED WITHIN OUR REPUBLIC FROM ITS FORMA- 
TION UP TO THE PRESENT DAY. 



Author of tlie Rovolutiouary Life aud Services ofCaptain Samuel Dewees, 



K^IBKIiLISHED -WITH A NU9IBER OF ENGRAVINCtS. 



O er che glad -waters of tUe dark blue Sea, ^^ 
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as ^H( 
Far as tho breeze can bear the billows foani,^^ 
Sui-vey our EMPIRE and behold oUr HOME." 
Far :t?\"rind'? can dash the-cloudn. up Heavens's steepest ethereal crag 
'■"'- I Home elevated — high fixed and firm her FLAG-, 



i^iiUimore: 



PRINTED BY ROBERT NEILSON 
No. 6, South Cliarlcs street. 



1844. 

< opy-ilght sccurtd according to tlie Act of Cougrec*. 



H 



^1 

» 

^4- 






HILL OF SCIENCE; 

OR, 

TRAVEL ANU LABOR OF GEI¥IIJS. 

KEY TO THE FRONTISPIECE. 

Travel of Genius from the stoop of Ignorance up the rugged 

pathway towards the fruitful and elevated fields 

or plains of Science. 

l8t. Genius wadinji; through adversity, laden witii Poverty, carrying the key of 
the , ofstudy, and of strength, welcomed by friends and beset by an infer- 
nal banditti called Furies. 

2d. Demoniac Ignorance, >eated at the foot of the Mount, enwrapped in weeds, i. e. 
his own Ignorance, and the Ignorance of many, drawiiio; Genius back by a cord. 

3d. Prejudice in the act of hurling a javelin, is prevented by Perseverance, who ia 
about to cut the cord on which he is standing. 

4th. Perseverance in the act of cutting the cord, i)recipi(ates Prejudice to the ground, 

6th. Good Humor, tickled at the action, cannot help expressing himself on the oc- 
casion. 

6th. Resolution, accompanying Genius, encourages him in ascending the Hill of Sci- 
ence. 

7th. Discord knocked down with the ke)' of strength, lies sprawling under the feet 
of Genius. 

8th. Envy seated upon the rock of spleen. 

9 and 10th. Injury and Insult, two dijmons of no little notoriety, approach in a menac- 
ing manner, but are deterred by Moderation. 

11th. Moderation engaged in restraining Injury and Insult. 

12th> Scorn standing on the side of the way, seems to derive a secret or innate satii- 
faction from an opportunity offering in which he can indulge in pointing and 
laughing — admirable weapons. 

13th. Virtue by the side of Patriotism, welcomes Genius forward, in language, ten- 
der and expressive. 

1 1th Angel soaring overhead bearing wreath, and pointing to crown of reward on the 
Hills of Holiness, addresses Genius. 

16th. Sensibility ("Nature's ornaiucnt) seated upon the rock of Maiden tenderness, 
expresses her desires in icvf words. 

16th Health bearing the jBn/m of consolation and life, welcomes Genius upward. 

17th. Friendship advancing declares her power and province. 

18th. Hope pointing to Freedom's Liberty cap, and Plains of Science, encourages 
Genius in his asca||i,thither. 

19th. Toleration seatce^Plow ("upon the rock constitution,) reading responds to Scorn, 
Envy and Discord, reprimanding them severely for their harsh conduct towards 
Genius, and their unjustifiable course of lawlessness. 

20th. Calumny with Demoniac expression of countenance, appears at the mouth of 
his cavern and is preparing to let fly a dart at Genius, but is deterred by the 
sudden approach of Friendship. He contents himself at this time, however, by 
threatening. 

Slst. A Muse seated upon a moss-covered rock with an Irish or David's Harp in hand, 
encourages Genius onward with his sweet voice, and Heavenly enrapturing 
so"iids and words of truth in counsel, welcomes him as a laborer for the Pi ince of 
Peace, 

22d. Patriotism with virtue at his side leans upon the sword of Freedom— of com 
maiid, and welcomes Genius onward in his labors for his country. 

23d. Revenge, armed, and in a menacing attitude boasts of his untenable powers. 

21th. Prayer at the rugged steep— overjut, engaged in fcrvcntsupplicaticn at a Throne, 
of Grace for enduring strength for Genius. 



2Bth. Modesty s<aiitling behind the Muse of Inspiration, welcomes Genius to the 
fountain of Freedom — of purity on the first Plains of Science. 

26th. Mercy standing upon the Rock of Eternal Ages, hovering with expanded wings, 
the " Infants" carried thither by the laliors of Genius. 

27th. First Plain of Science on which stands Fountain, Books, Maps, Chart? &c. &c. 

28th. Fountain fioin which gushes forth in one steady and unabated flow the pure 
and crystal waters of freedom — of Liberty — of Right and Independence untram- 
melled. 

29lh. Rugged Steep or overjut that leads from the First to the Second Plain of Science 
— seemingly inaccessible; but industry, patience, perseTeraiice, resohition and 
Divine Strcnglli imparted can and does ensure success in all laudible entcrprizes 
— success in this. 

30th. Eagle, loud screaming Bird of Liberty perched upon the overjut— the lofty Bird 
of his Colnrabia that no marksman can hit. 

1st. Genius. Better be seeking to avoid a cell in a state's prison, or a lofty exit from 
life between the Heavens and the Earth. Welcome thou Free Native Emblem 
of my Columbia's Liberty and strength— my companion of the night in the bush, 
thy loud screamings of Liberty possess no terrors for me, go soar the Heavens 
unmolested and (ree as the mountain winds of my own native land. Although 
I see thee not oft, I can hear of thee still. 

31st. Dove of Peace hovering over the greatest suffering grounds of Genius. 

32d. Second Plain of Science upon which stands the Temple of Genius. — Temple of 
Liberty — Temple of Virtue, beyond which are to be seen, the High Hills of 
Holiness. 

33d. Patience seated upon the Rock of Promise, by prayer to God and faith in his prom- 
ises is the Hand-maiden of Genius in his severest and sorest conflicts and stiiig- 

^"' LANGUAGE OF EACH CHARACTER. 

1st. Genius. Friendship, thou oft makest glad the heart, and thou too, hope, joyous 

hope, oft smoothest life's rugged pathway, let all the furies rave, 1 carry this 

key as my strength and passport to yonder Plains 
2d. Demoniac Ignorance. I will draw you back to the stoop — to my own level. 
3d. Prejudice, I have been the means of burying thousands of projects with their in- 
ventors, and your grand designs of glory in the future, 1 will also destroy. 
4th. Perseverance. Vilo bragadocia, get thee hence — Genius this much I do for you 

and the breath of omni|)otcnce can do much, much more — can blast your enemies 

and their every effort into the dust of death. 
5th. Good Humor. Ha, ha, ha I have beeu looking to see you turn a summerset, 

recollect, Prejudice, the old adage : "they who live in glcna-houses should not 

be the first to throw stones." 
6th. Resolution. Be firm, Genius, pursue an onward course, nor cast one longing, 

lingering look behind ; 1 will accompany you and be your support. 
7th. Discord. What the devil is in the country? a fellow is hardly up until he is 

knocked down again. Oh my ! oh my horn, my horn, its broke, its broke. 
1st. Genius. If you are not satisfied with that fall, up and get you a new horn and 

I shall give you another tumble and shall break that also — but recollect one thing, 

every fall the harder to the last fatal one. 
8th. Envy. My venom well chewed will hinder your ascension. 
9 and lOih. Injury and Insult. We arc not slack to do injustice; nor do we consult 

the feelings of any. 
11th. Moderation. Beware, act more leniently. Are y«u both devoid of feeling? 

Shrink from the onset with shame. 
12th. Scorn. I will point and laugh, if I can do no more. Ha, ha, ha. 
13th. Virtue. Thou hast our wishes, and thou shalt have our aid — speed thy way 

hither. 
14th. Angel. Genius, here is a wreath of honor but it deserves not a name, beside 

yonder Bright Crown upon the Hills of Holiness. Through the chamber of the 

vista dost thou not behold it. Thy crown — thy reward is glory. Onward my 

son and fear thee not. " Lo I am with thee" is the spirit's watchword and faith's 

countersign of thy God. 
16th. Sensibility. Oh, had I power, how cheerfully would I aid thee, summon unto 

thyself that innate courage by which ou have so often inspired thyself when 

kscending thither, prayer is help and for thee it shallascend. 
16th. Health. I hold the healing balm, broad is the latitude reserved unto himself by 

Gilead's God. " If I will that he tarry till I come what is that lo thee, follow 

thou me." Onward my son with renewed vigor, it is my province to prepare 

the halm of life. 



1st. Genius. Nature is sovereign ia the hands of a sovereign God. If lie wills it, 
it is done. If he but speak the word he is obeyed, and if he commands it stand - 
est fast whatsoever he dost command. He is all sutiicienl. He it is that pre- 
pares and fits the back for the burthen. He it is tliai tempers the winds to the 
shorn Iamb. And he it is, wlioif be says " fear not my son, lo I am with thee, still 
and shall be unto the end." If he speaks thus, faitti's sun^hine must dissipate 
all fear, althougli life be put upon the narrow isthmus that divides time from eter- 
nity. 

17th. Friendship. I will befriend — I am the offspring of a noble mind — therefore it 
is my province — this, the height of my ambition to prepare life's serviceable and 
sunny solace, calumny hide thee in the rotten core of tliine own insignificance. 

18th. Hope. Seest thou, through the vista of futiiiity, that bright and luminous Lib- 
erty cap whose rays are to cover the whole earth— that bright hallowed and 
unwaning day star of Peace — rewards of thy labors ? Retrace not your steps, 
follow OD, though arduous be the task. I am your inseparable companion by the 
way. 

19th. Toleration. Shame, Scorn, do you arrogate to yourselves the power of condemn- 
ing.'' to err is human ; to forgive is divine. And > ou Envy what fault have you 
to find with him who labors not on any man's foundation? go find thy paralels in 
toads and venomous beasts, in mewing cats and snarling dogs; and you too Dis- 
cord, he'll level you fast as you mount the stump to sow the seeds of dissension 
in the glorious Realm of a Divine Master. It is the folly of hell in you to think 
to do as you will. 

20th. Calumny. The lamb is no better in my eyes than the wolf, I can and will 
poison Friedship's cup. 

21st. Muse. For thee Genius will I unlock, the secret and hidden fountains of all 
knowledge. 

22d. Patriotism. For thee I hold the sword and with the firm grasp of courage 
will I retain it, speed thee hither, we accept thy offered friendship and well 
timed aid, thou hast our wishes and thou shall have our aid also. 

23d. Revenge. I am armed for the combat and I will be avenged at the price of 
blood. Nought but blood will satisfy me — I am prepared. 

1st. Genius. "Prepared" yes for a fall, how do you like the position of your com- 
panion and neighbor Discord in his headlbremost slidings down to "Death's 
Shades" again, I carry such fellows no longer or farther than to where I find 
them out. 

24th. Prayer. I will endeavor to obtain Heaven's strength to aid thee Genius in ac- 
complishing your arduous tasks — particularly, when ascending this Rubicon ledge 
of to man seemingly impossibility, but witli God all things are possible 

25th. Modesty. Better to retire behind Inspiration at home and dwell in the silence 
of hope's pleasures, by drinking deep from Wisdom's Golden Bowl, than be fore- 
most in all the bubbles and brawlings of life's unsatisfying rounds of cheating, 
humbugs and lying vanities. I reserv* myself in Nature's purity for the Grand 
Liberty Temple of mv Lord — of my God. 

1st. Genius. Thou ulialt be safe Modesty in thine own determined and faithful re- 
servation of thyself when all deserter.? shall tumble (frointhe worldly good they 
have sought) fast down the hill again without vision and without glory. Noth- 
ing that a Genius carries beyond the overjut, can icmain upon the Mount and 
be unfaithful to the pure, coming glory of Earth's Supreme Majesty of Glory. 
Black hearted ingratitude, did he sufler manly, fearlessly and faithfully what 
voluntarily he undertook to suffer for you— did he dare death to rob him whilst 
you should stand alone battling for hiin, for home, and for God, in faith's cheer- 
fulness—to rob him of you, but by faking you out of life through his own heart? 
Did he suffer as a voluntary hostage in "Death's Shades" for you — that he might 
put glory upon the head of a despised Galilean Prince of Eternal Glory — the 
Prince all (iloriou? and Invisible of his Nation's Peace? Yes he did, but this 
can avail you nothing now. The die is cast, the Dove of Peace h&a flown, never 
to return to you again. 
33d. Patience. Genius remember " the Kingdoms of this world shall become the 
Kingdoms of the Lord and his Christ." 

"He'll call on mc, I'll answer him ; 
I will be with him still 
In trouble to deliver him ; 
And honor him I will." 



PREFACE. 

The author has often regretted that books possessing biogra- 
phical sketches of the lives of the signers of the Declaration of 
American Independence and of many of the Noble Heroes of the 
Revolutionary and last wars — of many of ttie civilians who have 
acted a prominent part upon the theatre of action within our 
glorious republic should be found only in books of high price, 
- ^^ thereby baring very many readers in indigent circumstances from 
acquiring a correct knowledge of men and things, especially in 
those portions of the country remote tiom the great reading marts 
where Libraries are established and many other facilities afforded 
to young readers who can claim nothing as their inheritance but 
poverty. 

Believing that a work such as the author proposes, will have 
a tendency to promote a knowledge of the country and of her 
great ones, and assist materially in fixing events and a knowledge 
of characters firmly in the minds of his readers, and operate as a 
class-book to initiate them into the vast field of a more abstruse 
knowledge upon the subjects he proposes to treat of. 

An apology perhaps is due for the free use he has made of 
poetical effusions. Prose writings interspersed with poetry from 
the pens of gifted authors he looks upon as he does upon a ver- 
dant landscape, on whose face rises prominently into view the 
beautiful laurel evergreen, and its God formed and finished flow- 
ers of the most exquisite loveliness, or verdant ever flowering 
aromatic magnolia of rich and sublime grandeur. He has en- 
deavored to enrich the present volume_ with some very elegant 
pieces of poetry. That they possess the true flame of an exal- 
ted and undying patriotism, brilliancy, sublimity and morality of 
sentiment, chasteness of thought, flowing in strains of the ^ree, 
he leaves his readers to judge. He wishes in their use to esta- 
blish a kind of court of the graces, at the levee of which he de- 
sires our patriotic youth of both sexes to be in attendance for the 
purpose of cultivating and polishing the taste, enriching the un- 
derstanding, animating and warming their bosoms with the glow 
of patriotic fervor, binding more closely thereto, the principles 
of a true, intrinsic and lasting patriotism, and lastly, of bettering 
the heart ? He wishes in catering deep to open up a fountain at 
which our patriotic youth may drink in large draughts of satis- 
fying waters of poetic purity. Those pieces that are original, he 
hopes will also meet with the approbation of his readers. 

As regards his introductory Lecture, it will be at once apparent 
that his object is to aid Parents, Teachers and Pupils, by his in- 
structive counsels and show that the human mind by certain con- 
tingencies is often cast down from her sublime abode and is made 
to occupy a sivbordinate station to those things that instead of 



being suffered to be instruments to cause her to relinquish her 
high, honorable and superior elevation and become a cringing 
vassel or subordinate thereto ought to be tramped by her in her gi- 
gantic tread and be held in subjection to her glorious steppings 
of stateliness. That mind should be made to succumb to a base 
inferiority ought never to be the case in any country, especially in a 
republic where the freedom of speech and the liberty of the press 
are so gloriously guaranteed to its humblest citizens. 

God having left the human will free to act upon j\ist princi- 
ples, the mind of man within my country in its proper sphere of 
action is, and ought to be free and independent as the mountain 
winds of his own native Columbia. 

Making little pretensions to scholarship and far less to that of 
being a pedant, he can assure his readers he has one motive (as 
regards education) which is paramount to all others, this, a de- 
sire of instructing confidently in accordance with his own expe- 
rience and tendering aid to young mental strugglers in their out- 
set efforts to climb the Hill of Knowledge. And as a last effort 
upon his own part within the confines of a preface he would ob- 
serve, there is great encouragement toyouth offered in pasthistory. 

Judge McLane, (now of Ohio,) was a self educated man. 

Benj. Franklin, was a Tallow Chandler then a Printer, do. 

Roger Sherman (signer of Declaration,) Shoemaker, do. 

Daniel Webster a farmer's son and Plough boy. 

Christopher Columbus a Weaver. 

Dr. Goldsmith an assistant in an Apothecary shop. 

Robert Burns (poet,) was a ploughboy. 

Rev. John Brown of Haddington, was a poor herdsman's boy. 

Bloomfield a sweet (rural) poet, was a cobbler. 

Milton was a street Inspector. 

Fulton was educated in a common school. 

Rittenhouse (philosopher) was also. 

West the celebrated portrait painter was also. 

Washintjton's education was little over that of a common 
school education. 

Jackson's education was of a similar kind. 

Simon Snyder, nine years Governor of Pa. was a self taught 
man, and a tanner by trade. 

Youth, receive my counsels and let industry, morality, pa- 
triotism and true religion prevail as constant habits with you in 
quest of knowledge and blessings most unquestionably will at- 
tend you. 

That his readers may be amply repaid for their toil in a peru- 
sal and that his humble efforts to instruct may be crowned with 
an entire success, is the ardent desire and prayer of the 

AUTHOR. 



N^**^ 



INTRODUCTORY LECTIRB 

TO 

A COURSE OF LECTURES 

ON 

tTKE GLORY OF COLUMBIA, 

DELIVERED AT HAMPSTEAD, MARYL.AJVD. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : 

Under what circumstances are we assembled together. 
Can it be possible that we have come together to satisfy an idle 
curiosity. If so, we have lost sight of one very important item 
in the catalogue of mental pleasures. If so, we have lost sight 
of mental improvement altogether — mental improvement, which 
is not only an enlarged, but a grand item in the aggregate amount 
of all our rational enjoyments. 

Having come to this place in order to participate in the "feast 
of reason and the flow of soul," the results of intellectual cater- 
ings or mental exercises for our mutual gratification. 

Having come for the purpose of receiving instruction — for the 
purpose of being edified by our social intercourse — by our social 
exertions, I am the more willing to acknowledge my belief, that 
an idle curiosity has not been your prompter in propelling you 
forward. 

Having come for the purpose of blending my interests with 
yours in the acquirement of knowledge, I am the more willing 
to suppose that you have come for a purpose not dissimilar in 
its nature. Thus stating, I throw myself upon your kind indul- 
gence upon this, and all other occasions. 

That learned and celebrated jurisprudent. Lord Bacon, was 
asked upon one occasion to what he owed his great knowledge. 
"To this" said he, "that of not being ashamed to ask for infor- 
mation when I needed it." 

Who is he that is so learned, that he needs not to be more learn- 
ed ? Who? He who of all obtruders is the most obtrusive — 
an empty self-conceited fool. I became wise, said another cel- 
ebrated writer, when I began to know that I knew nothing. — 
When I began to know myself a fool. 



If the exertions and results of exertions can be pushed in their 
infinite progressions throughout all eternity to come in the ac- 
quirement of knowledge, do we not all need information ? — 
Most unquestionably we do. 

The incomprehensible and incoraniunieable God that fills im- 
mensity, has marked all things with the seal of his unfathomable 
intelligence throughout the whole economy of nature. The im- 
press of whose mighty power and transcendent skill and excel- 
lence of workmanship is as beautifully and forcibly developed in 
the formation of the warbling songsters of the forest, in their glos- 
sy plumage of exquisite natural beauty, — in their fine toned en- 
rapturing notes of sweetest melody as in any thing that falls with- 
in the range of the human eye. Yes, as faithfully impressed 
upon the butterfly of the field — the loathsome catterpillar, with 
wings of transparency thatare studded with a variety of the most 
lively and lovely colors — as profoundly impressed upon the chim- 
ing rill which chants forth in its meanderings the continued prai- 
ses of its great Author — an impress as faithfidly and magnifi- 
cently evinced in the creation of these, methinks as could be 
displayed in the construction of a globe that wheels its course 
through the illimitable fields of an eternally created space. The 
cry was, "great is the goddess Diana of the Ephesians," but 
how totally annihilated becomes the expression when laid along 
side of this one, great is the Lord God of Heaven. 

"Flow on thou bubbling, sparkling rill. 
And as thou runncst, sparkle still. 

And cease thy music never; 
My lingering thoughts shall dwell with thee, 
Although thy gentle murmurs be 

Unheard by me forever." 

If after the contemplation of man, of woman, created in love- 
liness and true holiness — created but a little lower than the an- 
gels — created with countenances erect and with the mighty im- 
press of God's own image sublimely bestowed upon them, we 
find that the declaration of that God is, that men, that women 
in their highest intellectual endowments, lofty earthly grandeur, 
pomp, magnificence and superb glories, fall far short of the sweet 
winning glories attendant upon the modest lilies of the field. If 
that declaration be true (which none dare doubt) should we not 
adopt the language of the sweet singer of Israel. " What is 
man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou 
visitest him^ 

" lie tliat looks forth on shrub and (rec 
In vcrnil bcriutv ^iiiilin'!' ; 



Or hears the warbler's notes of glee. 

As if the hours bej;uiling — 
Or marks the nations of a day 

Upon the sunbeams floating ; 
Or wutchfs in the fountain's spray 

The active fishes sporting — 
Yet nothing sees to make him glad. 

Or wake devotion's fire, is mad. 

If worlds on worlds that round us turn, 

Sublime, exhaustless theme ! 
And centres that in glory burn. 

Assert a great Supreme — 
Do not the breeze, the dew, the shower. 

The rill, the woody grove, 
1^ The insect's life, the pencilled flow^k 

Show forth a^athcr's love ! — ^ 
Whoever on this earth hath trod. 

Is mad thatsaith "there is no God." 

In man's contemplation of himself in his ingress into the world 
in his primilive state through his progenitor Adam — man at 
whose ingress from the han'l of his creator, the morning stars sang 
logetlier, and all the sons of God shouted for joy — in man's con- 
templation of the sublime works of that creator, of the existence, 
character, attributes and power of that God of all things and fin- 
isher of our faith, is there not an open and wide field spread out 
before the minds of finite beings — an expanse unbounded indeed 
— an expanse broad, long, high and deep as eternity itself. Un- 
bounded, yet hedged and hidden from our view, mainly, through 
the agency of our coinmon enemy — Ignorance. 

If the allwise, benificent and ailglorious Master Builder of rail- 
lions of planetary systems and tens of millions and millions of 
millions of globes, far more stupendous, far more grand, beauti- 
fied, luminous and glorious than the one upon which we dwell, 
is enshrined beyond his Revelations to man in the immensities 
and essence of his own Eternal God-Head, what are the most 
learned amongst men — living monuments of ionorance. 

The mind of man is a kingdom; happy, thrice happy is he that 
is so greatly blest, as to be able to bear rule over it in a proper 
manner. How much more potent is the sceptre's sway, when 
the internal operations of this kingdom are bound together and 
strengthened l)y the lig^iments of a proper education. How sub- 
lime are its researches ! How magnified in detail would be the 
aggregate of all its wonderful and beneficial researches in the 
past. How inconceivable then, those of the future. 

How beautiful, how grand, how glorious beyond compare are 
2 



10 

all the emanations of power within the kingdom of the mind, es- 
pecially, when the supreme Regency is in the hands of reason 
and common sense. The presiding Muse has but to sound the 
tocsin, has but to appeal to the good sense, wisdom and patriot- 
ism of the subjects of this glorious realm — has but to despatch 
his official couriers to the east, the west, the north and the south 
bearing the broad notes of war. To Arms ! To Arms ! your coun- 
try calls — has but to marshal his grand forces of efficiency — has 
but to utter the command oi forward and his noble troops rush 
to the battle-field, to conquest, to victory, to triumph and to 
glory. Against and over what common foe ? Against and over 
Ignorance. 
• The human mind is indestructible — the human mind, however ^ 

1^ encumbered or depryed it may be,Jts operations in the contin-A li| 

gencies of this vexing and transitorylife is ever alive, is ever ac- 
tive, is ever on the wing in mental struggles to follow its own 
polar stars, study and induction to the goal of attainment. 

The human mind is co-existant in its existance with that Deity 
from whom it hath emanated, and in whose keeping it is, and 
into whose immediate presence it must soar, when this mortal 
shall have put on immortality, when this corruptible, shall have 
put on incorruptibility. 

The human mind being indestructible, it follows then, that it 
is to be immortal, eternal in its expansions, eternal in its surveys 
and eternal in its progressive operations throughout the illimi- 
table and eternally green fields of never ending bliss. This or 
eternally cramped and contracted in its avpfully fearful wander- 
• ings, among the rocks of eternal darkness — of eternal despair — 

of eternal misery and of interminable woes beyond the tomb. 

"The human soul is like the vestal's fire. 
Lit with a flame that never must expire ; 
And conscious of its destination high. 
It fain would spread its angi 1 wings to fly. 
Soaring beyond the bounds of space and time. 
To a more perfect and etheral clime. 
Where all its fairest hopes of bliss arc won. 
And every star is kindled to a sun." 

The soul of man is believed to be the immaterial or immortal 
spirit which inhabits the corporeal body. Did the Psalmist mean 
the corporeal body disconnected from the loill^ the mind and the 
sGul^ when he gave utterance to the devotional language in high 
praise of the Master Architect of the universe, '■^fearfully and 
wonderfully am I made ^ I apprehend not. Permit me to ask, 
how will the following version of the Psalmist'slanguage be receiv- 



11 

ed by this audience? How beautifully adapted is each member and 
organ of this my body in their respondent actions of obedience 
to that soul and that will, with which thou O Lord hast been 
pleased to endow me, in the almighty exercise of thy creative en- 
ergies. 

How beautifully has Young expressed himself upon the soul. 



^/^ 



" The soul of man was made to walk the skies. 

Delight^ outlet of her prison here ! 

There, disencumbered from her chains, the ties 

Of toys terrestrial, she can rove at large ; 

There freely can respire, dilate, extend. 

In full proportion let loose all her powers." 



However brilliant may be our contemplations of mind and of 
soul, there is something that arrests us as with magnetic attrac- 
tion in our high careerings of mental pleasures on these mountains 
of sublimity — that draws us back to a common level, yea, oft to 
the very stoop of Ignorance. 

How damped are we in the midst of all ourcontemplatory grat- 
ifications when we are met by the fact, a fact known unto all of 
us and that too, beyond the possibility of a doubt. What is this 
fact ? What is it that stares us in the face and which we are 
more unwilling to encounter than the hideous and ghastly coun- 
tenance of a demi devil ? W^hat is it ? The treachery of mem- 
ory. 

Heaven, said a celebrated Divine of the olden day school. — 
'' Heaven stands like a little mark in a widejie/d, but one way to 
hit it and a thousand ways to err from it?^ Earth and her tens 
of thousands of clogs, manacles and chains fastened upon the 
human mind, were the ties of toys terrestrial, alluded to by the im- 
mortal Young in his Night Thoughts. 

The human mind is very correctly delineated with respect to 
its want of retentions, by the instructive Gisborne in his " Natu- 
ral Theology." The mind of man is like a granary in which a 
great quantity of grain is deposited, but perforated with holes, 
through which the corn is constantly trickling away. 

O memory! faulty and treacherous as thou art, thou hast been 
the theme of inspired poets throughout all ages. 

O memory celestial maid. 
Who glean'st the flow'rets cropped by time. 
And sufTering not a leaf to fade, 
Preserv'st the blossoms in their prime. 

Bring, bring, those blossoms to my mind. 
When life wiis new and Ellen kind. 



12 

to my raptur'd ears convey. 
The gentle things my friend would say. 

Uncquall'd virtues o;raced her breast, 

1 saw enraptured and was blest, 
With thy loved friendslii|>, oh how dear ! 
Were thy sweet accents to my ear. 

But sickness undermining slow, 

And death, hard, unrelenting foe, 0f 

From my fond hopes did cruel rend, ^ 

Thetenderest spouse and sweetest friend. 



^A^ 



" Mind, in its perfection, is incomprehensible, and its seat is 
only upon the throne of Heaven. 

Around us, we behold every work of the Divine Architect, 
moulded with exquisite symmetry, regularity, permanence and 
adaptation. Above, we admire the azured canopy, in whose 
bosom reign the Majesties of Heaven, with their glittering ves- 
ture ; the planets encircling each other in their fixed course, mov- 
ing in delightful concert. 

These, alone, evidence the existence of a Great Original, pos- 
sessing povk'er not seen by the limited capacities of man ; and 
benevolence not appreciated by him. 

On men, the radiant beams of the supreme mind reflect their 
light ; and it is this only which ranks him over the world of ex- 
clusive animal appetites and passions. It is mind which assim- 
ilates him to his Maker. It is that which constitutes true supe- 
riority of one to another, — neither birth, wealth, nor popularity 
confer this. The man of humble parentage, who passes quietly 
through life, practising the cardinal virtues of the heart — guided 
by the promptings of gooti sense — though his name be scarcely 
known out of his own family circle, (or routine of business,) that 
man may possess more true superiority >han many votaries of 
unbounded wealth, oi slaves of popular feeling. 

The mind of men, generally, are like the crafts on the bosom 
of the ocean, tossed about by wind and wave. They are like 
them, weak and unstable. Their course is directed by prejudice, 
or surrounding allurements. 

In contrast, how firm the foundation, and beautiful the super- 
structure of a mind built by the hand of moral courage ; whose 

roof is the sanction of conscience and Heaven ! 

* * * * * * »♦ 

Observation satisfies us that man has accomplished consider- 
able ; but reflect how many ages have passed away since the 
world's creation, — reflect on the innatej3rinc?/)/<?s of exertion, pow- 



13 

er, acquisition, and improvement, possessed by him ; — how much 
ought necessarily to follow. Can he then deserve praise from the 
author of liis being ? Had man not so devotedly worshipped at the 
shrine of animal enjoyment, but had his offerings been led up to the 
altar of knowledge, — wisdom, power, and happiness would reign 

triumphant throughout the land, and praise crown the earth ! 

« * * , # * * * 

How felicitous is the harvest of a richly cultivated mind! Its 
stalks do not shoot'^p and strengthen, nor its fruits ripen, in a 
•day ; but time brings the seeds of knowledge to maturity, in its 
accustomed slowness but certainty. 

How lasting are the monuments of true mental glory. They 
do not crumble into atoms with the bones of those whose names 
they commemorate, but stand unconquerable, and revered by man- 
kind." 

Here I pause, and observe that the part of my Lecture now ap- 
proaching will (as is usual) have "holes picked" in it by certain 
envious characters with whom no man will ever wear well, should 
he possess abilities but a single shade above their own lofty (al- 
though empty) conceptions of themselves. Forgetting as they 
do, that my present Lecture is an introductory one, and not con- 
fined to any particular topic but touching-on those subjects that 
shall be treated of in subsequent ones and bestowing a knowledge 
in a general outline as to the course to be pursued by myself, 
in my choice of what 1 shall deem to constitute the gloiy of my 
Columbia. If I shall be able to bring my readers with me in 
their approval of that course it shall afford me a great degree of 
pleasm-e. Great actions, actions all glorious in themselves I 
conceive, cannot be produced without great minds. By what 
may be deemed an erratic course, I wish to benefit, to infuse a 
spirit of emulation among my hearers (and readers) young daugh- 
ters and sons. If in this, I shall be successful, I will willingly lie 
under the censures of fault finders. 

Ladies and Gentlemc7i — I have commenced with mind and 
minds that have produced groat actions will be found to constitute 
some of the viands with which my lectural board shall be spread 
for your entertainment in my subsequent lectures. 

This being my intention, I feel myself therefore not only at lib- 
erty, but capable also to judge thus — that any set of principles or 
subjects, theoretically or practically, advanced or used for the 
pur[)ose of developing the resources of the human mind and that 
will instil into the minds of those having the culture of minds un- 
der their care, any process, by which they can be enabled to do 
their high and imperitive duty to the young, or, that may be used 



14 

(as I now design) to point out the pathway to youth and assist 
ihem in walking cheerfully, earnestly and respectably therein, I 
apprehend is by no means an unpardonable transgression in the 
eyes of parents who study aright, the welfare of their children. 
I shall now proceed with this portion of ray Lecture, which done, 
I shall then offer a few remarks with regard to the subjects which 
shall be embraced in after Lectures; one remark in order to shut the 
mouths of the garrulous. With regard to my proposed manage- 
ment of children in their education ; I possess a knowledge and 
that knowledge is of the best kind, having been founded on ac- 
tual experience. I envy no man his abilities, be they small, or be 
they great. It is known of myself that J love to behold a natural 
mind develope itself — that I love to behold the possessor of a 
good mind, a natural (and not a hateful and affected or artificial) 
man or woman and to aid such has ever given me great pleasure; 
that such may be richly benefitted in time by my counsels, is my 
happy hope. As for throwing pearls before swine with the hope 
of ever beholding a return, proportionate to the exertion or to their 
value, is a hope all fruitless in itself. 

Clogged and fettered as my mind may be and faulty as memo- 
ry may be also, I invoking the instrumentality of both, am desir- 
ous of addressing you now and again upon a subject dear to my 
heart, a subject as unfathomable and inexhaustible, as it is un- 
bounded and glorious. 

That you may not have your expectations raised too high at 
the hands of those ever friendly, ever kind to me and that have 
always appreciated and warmly manifested a capacity upon my 
part. In order then, to set proper bounds to your expectations, 
I state, I am unlettered and unlearned, I am self-taught. It 
would be quite unnecessary perhaps for the author to state, that 
in a work of the kind as is here proposed much is looked for at 
the hands of an author. With regard to himself he can state he 
raises no claims to being a scholastic author. He is one of your 
self-taught men, having had the advantages of but 07ie month and 
five day^s schooling since in the e/eweniA year of his age. In 
making this statement he is not to be viewed as casting a single 
reflection upon his parents, by whom he was respectably reared 
and provided for in his youth. He was alone deprived of a classi- 
cal education, through a father's losing by misfortune the earn- 
ings of twenty-five years of his life. If the work is not in itself 
calculated to meet with a general approval, allowances undoubt- 
edly can and will be made for the author by the reasonable and 
■well disposed among his readers, especially when they are told 
that he has culled, penned and prepared the present Lecture chief- 
ly for the benefit of youth. Self-taught, pretending not to pos- 



15 

Sess classical knowledge or classical abilities received at the 
hands of classical teachers, I am quite content to pass myself off 
upon this, and shall upon any other occasion, as I am in the hab- 
it of doing as a laborer in my avocation, for what I am worth and 
for no more, I have come to treat an audience with a becoming 
respect and expect to receive the same civilities in return. If I 
shall merit your approbation and respect I shall not fear that I 
shall receive disrepect at your hands. To do this, consistently 
with my principles, shall be my aim. I desire you to mark the 
declaration — consistently with my principles. I was born as 
every rational being is, possessed of a thinking and enquiring 
mind at the hands of an adorable Creator. A thinking and en- 
quiring mind, by the aid of which, I have thought for myself, de- 
signed my own pathway and pin my faith to no man's sleeve, wheth- 
er of clergy or laity, and have not only independence enough to 
pursue my chosen course, although not among myrtles and roses ; 
but independence enough, to betray a knowledge of my principles 
on any and all necessary occasions. I never was a professor of 
religion in being attached in membership to any sect or denomina- 
tion of worshipping people, I have a Testamentary legacy and free 
boon from my God, an Old Testament and a New one — a Bible, a 
glorious volume of the most rich and sublime truths — a volume, 
replete with the most grand and lofty kinds of instruction. Thus 
observing, I state therewith, that I am not ashamed of my God, 
that I am neither afraid nor ashamed to acknowledge that God, to 
be my Columbia's Sovereign, ruling", independent and invisible 
God all glorified, although he was the despised, forsaken and dis- 
owned, against whom the doors I may state of all earth were shut, 
were closed, were barred in earth's aristocratic, wanton cruelty 
and meanness. 

My time is wholly occupied by day, and in a very perplexing 
avocation,thatofteaching a country school. I state perplexing, al- 
though there are none perhaps to be found, that enjoy themselves 
in possessing mure peaceful feelings when engaged in the duties 
of a school-master, than my humble self. Perplexing, yes, forty 
scholars large and small, (daily,)and each with a different dispo- 
sition of heart and of mind, and not a few, possessing as many 
wants daily and as many admonitional corrections each, as I have 
scholars in my school. I do not mean to insinuate, that I am a tu- 
tor to an ungovernable school, of this, I leave my audience to 
judge, when I state, I entered upon my duties surrounded by 
scholars with whom I was altogether unacquainted, nearly three 
months of my time has expired and I have not had to sue but in 
one solitary instance to the Birch* clique to assist me in govern- 

♦Birch^ a name frequently gircn to the rod of correction. 



16 

ino- my little family. I choose rather to call into requisition, the 
dormant republican, patriotic, sensible and social principles or 
qualities of the mind and hearts of my scholars to aid me in drill- 
intr my entire school — to aid my scholars in governing themselves 
upon true principles — upon the principles of self government, 
this, rather than scrape any acquaintance with the Birch lamily. 
It is true, a Solomon has told us, that inasmuch, as there is folly 
bound up in the heart of a child, it should not be spared the rod 
of correction on account of its crying; but it is as true, that an 
infinitely greater than a Solomon has said '■'■svffer little children 
to come unto mCf and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom 
of Heaven. ^^ 

I have used the rod of correction, and when I have done so, 
I have taught at the same time by its judicious application, its 
use; I nevtr do it however, unless it be in a forlorn hope, when the 
most turbulent passions exist, to engulph and drown the stellar 
virtues of childhood in its horrible vortex — when all the pleasing 
and amiable qualities are lost and reason becomes dethroned by 
means of so hideous a tyrant as stubborness, then I use the rod 
as an auxiliary — as an entering wedge, through whose cleft I can 
introduce admonitional instructions to the mind and the heart. 
For this purpose (without anger upon the part of a tutor) ought 
it to be used and for this purpose alone. For the man who whips 
a child to gratify his own spleen, ought in his turn to be well 
whipped himself. 

"Teachers of children should create the thirst and then offer the 
drink — produce and sharpen the appetite, and then merely say 
where the food can be found. A hungry child will find the cup- 
board, and a desire for knowledge will find its sources. 

Teachers must study the springs of action in the human mind, 
and the laws of mental growth, and the various modes of stimu- 
lating faculties to activity." 

" The question might be asked why are not more of the young 
men of the country, now under the " sublime process" of self edu- 
cation. Many reasons might be given, among them, these, too 
poor, too timid, too indolent, and too careless. Man's great 
object on earth is education ; and the offije of the Instructor, is 
simply, to prepare him to enter on his course, with ease and cer- 
tainty of success." 

" Each faculty of mind was given to us by an Omnicient Being 
for important purposes, and a vivid conception, is not among the 
least to serve us in moral and mental good. But let it be per- 
verted, let it be made subordinate to selfish passions, or allow it 
to be too busy with worldly desires, and there is nothmg in the 
mind that so soon will work its own ruin, and make it insensi- 



17 

ble to that happiness, which it is our duty to seek. Oh ! how 
oft does fancy weave the web of life of the most delicate texture, 
and dyed in the most brilliant hues, but how surely does stern, 
indifferent reality, with its strong finger draw away each lovely 
thread, and leave but a thin grey material, in which to clothe the 
ever coming future." 

" The love of acquiring knowledge for the intrinsic pleasure it 
affords, is valuable and efficient as a motive with those chiefly, 
whose early training has been judiciously conducted, or whom 
the teacher has already succeeded in interesting in recent studies. 
Its efficiency will also depend on the power of the teacher to 
present the subjects of school knowledge in an interesting and 
attractive aspect." 

" Where this is efFecied, the love or rather pleasure felt in ac- 
quiring knowledge, implanted in the mind by the beneficent 
Creator, doubtless for this very purpose, becomes a vigorous, 
steady, and increasing motive to improvement." 

" As a youth advances in his education, especially if the time 
and opportunities allotted to that invaluable object be adequate 
to its importance, other motives of this class may be employed ; 
among these is the love of knowledge for the advantages it con- 
fers ; which, with youth who are taught to exercise reflection 
and forecast in their affairs, is often found to operate so as to pro- 
duce all the application the most zealous and faithful teacher can 
desire." 

"In close connexion with this, in the order of mental develope- 
ment, is the love of character for the value of it in society. This 
motive to right and commendable behaviour, as well as to appli- 
cation, deserves a higher place in the estimation of teachers than 
it has usually received. Its importance the moment the youth 
enters the walks of social life, is universally admitted." 

" Fear and shame, the last in this class, are, notwithstanding, 
legitimate motives of interest. The ferule and the rod, as also 
the rebuke and reproach, are among the appointed means of wis- 
dom. But the writer has no disposition to recommend a more 
frequent resort to these correctives, than what already prevails ; 
on the contrary, the parent or teacher who makes a ciaily use of 
the rod, manifestly knows but little of human nature, and still less 
of the higher and more efTective motives of education." 

" In like manner, open rebuke, censure, and reproach before 
a school, are all appeals to a principle of shame, and, like the rod, 
they may prove efficient if very rarely introduced. In short, their 
good eflect will usually be in almost exact proportion to their 
infrequency. But the daily resort to whipping, and especially 
to school-censure, which has originated that odious English word 
3 



18 

scolding or schooling^ cannot be sufficiently deprecated, either for 
its pernicious tendency on the feelings and tempers of children, 
or for its degrading effect on the really ennobling and exalted 
work of education ; and the public would doubtless be the gainer, 
to give all such unskdful teachers, numerous as they are, a pen- 
sion from the school fund, on condition that they withdraw from 
a business for which they are manifestly unfit." 

My own method has ever been to admonish thus. Acquit your- 
selves honorably, do yourselves credit by an industrious applica- 
tion to study and to a faithful observance of all the good rules 
•which I have established in my school — rules by which I desire 
you to be governed within and without the school-house. Do 
your parents credit, honor them by your good conduct, whilst 
with me and whilst from me and you will most assuredly confer 
all the honors on me that I am ambitious to receive at your hands 
as my pupils. This kind of reasoning I have often observed, has 
melted the hearts of many of my scholars into the teriderest re- 
.signation to my will, and produced a full flow of the most willing 
obedience — results that days, weeks, months and years of scold- 
ing and beating could never have effected — resuUs that I therr 
tutor could be proud of and rejoice over, as luxurious satisfying 
honours. 

Every Master or Mistress when he or she first enters a school 
room upon duty, should study narrowly the nature, the bent of mind 
and make of affections of each scholar. I for my own part can 
safely state, that for the first w^eek or ten days, I would assume 
an air of entire indifference as to order &c. but at the same time 
was busy in watching and carefully, the bent of nature in each 
child, and in making notes to enable me to do my high duty to 
them thereafter and as I found my children's natures, so I adminis- 
tered the correctives, either in a mild and encouraging form, or in 
a checking assumption of a stern and independent authority for 
the then (necessary) time being, careful and studious to win upon 
the affections and senses of such in every possible way, until a 
radical change would be effected, which has been often of an as- 
tonishing cast even to myself. 

With fifty scholars around me, I have often pursued the follow- 
ing plan. I have lectured them upon the necessity of proper sub- 
ordination and order in a school-room, the beauties of self-gov- 
ernment, the propriety of scholars conducting themselves in an 
obedient manner willingly, the indulgence I felt bound to 
manifest to all such as should willingly conduct themselves in an 
orderly and proper manner — that I could not think of being fear- 
ed by any scholar, and far less of not being properly respected, 
that I always endeavored to put myself in the room and stead o 



19 

a judicious parent — that I desired ray scholars to view me as 
such, to approach me with the same confidence that a child na- 
turally does a parent, that they should not only fear to offend, but 
to be always anxiously desirous not to offend — that Ihey should 
view each other as so many brothers and sisters, and that the 
nearer they could cause my school to resemble a well conducted 
and agreeable family of children the more happy I should be, and 
the more pleasurable would be my arduous duties as their precep- 
tor — that it was always an unpleasant task for me to use the rod 
of correction, but if I could not exercise and maintain a proper 
authority without it, I felt bound to use it, and should do so, 
however reluctant I might feel in appealing thereto — that whilst 
scholars would act in accordance with good counsels from a pro- 
per sense of duty to me, themselves, their parents and society in 
general, I viewed it as quite unnecessary to have a rod in my 
school-room, and would observe to my scholars, younger and 
older, you are all disposed to do the things that are right, with- 
out being whipped into obedience, it is unpleasant forme to have 
this rod about me — I would rather throw a dozen of rods out of 
my school-room than to be under the necessity of bringing one 
in ; suppose we do try, all of us, to get along without the use of a 
rod, here (said I) goes for a trial and would open the school- 
room door and throw my rod far as I could throw it from the 
school-house. In this way I have very frequently succeeded in 
keeping a rod of correction* out of my school, for two, three and 
four weeks at a time. If I was proud of being instrumental in 
producing such a result for the sake of my own peace, theirs, 
and their ultimate good, how proud (does my audience suppose) 
were my scholars in their reflections upon the harmony and good 
will they were also instrumental in producing — proud in their 
sense of that mutual confidence and forbearance which existed 
between us, I as teacher and they as scholars. 

Let a teacher's constant current of appeals be made to the im- 
perishable possessed qualities of the child — to the infantile state 
of its reasoning powers and perceptions, and not to {he perishable, 
although it, is capable o^ feeling and very acutely too, the force 
of birch appeals. Approach a child four, five, six, or eight years 
old and appeal earnestly and constantly to its reason and com-' 
mon sense, although small may be the streams of either and what 
will be the result ? a yielding upon the true principles of mind in 

*In the absence of a rod, I never resorted (o the inhuman use of the ruler ferule, or 
any other weapon. The harbyrous practice of slapping the palms of tlie hands of delii-,- 
qtient scholars with a nile ought not to be countenanced for a moment, and he that re- 
sorts to the siill more inhuman and hellish practice of striking tlie points of » rhild't 
collected fingois with a rule, well deserves a severe casligation at the hands of ajustly 
enraged pannl. and a heavy hand iiiflieted upon him in law as his richlv merited niiu- 
ithment 



20 

exercise — obedience to the voice of reason — obedience to the 
voice of argument, and an obedience to the voice of example. 

Permit me to give three or four instances of the very early 
emanations of mind in as many infants. I once became an in- 
mate in a family within a mile of Pittsburg, I remained such for 
the space of six months. Possessing a fondness for the compa- 
ny of young children, I very frequently during leisure hours in- 
dulged in nursing a little child, which was not more than four 
month's old when I entered the family. This child, a female in- 
fant, became very much attached to me. So much so, that in 
the course of my six month's residence in the family it would 
refuse to go from me to its father, and would cry in its father's 
arms and refuse comforts and its peace until restored to my arms. 
Many were the little germs of mind pleasingly evinced by this 
little innocent during my stay. Sometime after 1 left the family, 
I went to home at a place called Briceland's Cross Roads, in 
Washington county and distant twenty-four miles from Pittsburg. 
Previous to starting, I visited the family and tied up some arti- 
cles of cloathing in a handkerchief, and when about to leave, the 
mother with the little girl in her arms accompanied me to the 
outer or street door, I shook hands with the mother and then with 
the child, which, I had no more than done until it commenced 
crying very sorely. I started, and as long as I was in hearing, my 
little friend's cries could be heard by myself, who could scarcely 
hide my own emotions, wrought up within me by the little sor- 
rowing child of gratitude and affection at our very unhappy part- 

I homed on a time six months in another family, twelve miles 
from Pittsburg in which was a little child, and which was wean- 
ed by its mother but a short time before I left the family. This 
little girl became warmly attached to me, and through my own 
indulgence at the first, I could not get away to my school after 
partaking of my breakfast each morning, until I took her to walk, 
sometimes to see the horses, other times the cows, sometimes 
the chickens and at other times the birds &c. Many were the germs 
of an expanding infantile intellect manifested by this little prattler 
also. One evening after returning from school, I took her up 
in my arms and carried her out to a field where her father was 
engaged in winnowing (cleaning) grain (with a wind-mill,) which 
had been threshed by a threshing machine from stacks which had 
been built in the field. I amused my little companion by turn- 
ing the crank, wheels and fan of the wind-mill. After doing so 
I returned with her to the house, she having shown evident signs 
of being highly delighted with the excursion. 

On the next morning after breakfast she appeared unusually 



21 

anxious to have her morning walk. I took her up in my arms 
and went out of the house proposing to go and show her the 
horses, she shook her head in token of no. I then proposed 
something else, at all of which she shook her head. Well (said 
I with an emphasis,) where shall we go? That moment she 
moved her right hand around in a circle imitating my actions 
on the evening before with the handle or crank to the wheels of 
the wind-mill, and as if to make me still more sensible of what she 
designed 1 should visit with her, she then pointed in the direc- 
tion to where the wind-mill was in the field. Improving upon 
the hints afforded me by the child, I then carried her in my arms 
to the wind-mill, and after amusing her there, returned with her 
to the house, where she was quite satisfied to part with me until 
the evening as usual. 

Three others I will instance, and shall then cease to trouble 
you further at this time with infantile or childhood reminiscences. 
I homed in a family in Fayette county. Pa. in 1840. In that 
family there was a little child which during the summer (about 
harvest.) had commenced to stand erect, at ihe side of a chair 
or any article to which she could cling. At the door leading 
from the kitchen to the setting room there were two steps to as- 
cend in order to reach the sitting-room floor. Seeing my little 
companion striving often to ascend and descend the steps, and 
fearful lest she should fall out of the upper room when quailing 
and clinging to the door cheek, I took some pains to learn her 
how to creep down the steps as well up, which she soon as my 
pupil accomplished. One cool day in September, I was sitting 
at the upper room fire, and with my back partly to the door and 
engaged in reading. Whilst thus engaged, I heard the little in- 
nocent giving tongue in her struggles in coming up the steps, I 
cast a side look and beheld her creeping up the steps, and for 
sometime paid no attention to her, knowing at the same time that 
she had obtained the mastery and could ascend when she pleas- 
ed. Still hearing her struggling in a direction towards the door, 
and knowing that she had spent a much greater time than neces- 
sary to bring her to me, I looked around and discovered, that as 
she attempted to rise to her feet, her little coats being lengthy, got 
under her feet and her weight kept them from coming out from 
under, and as soon as she would attempt to rise up, not being 
able to straighten herself, she immediately fell back again. I ob- 
served her to make several additional trials (for previous she must 
have made a number) before I spoke to her. At length, I said 
to her (when partly erect,) sit down again and pull your frock out 
from under your feet and then walk to me, speaking to her un- 
thinkingly as though I spoke to one much older, what was my as- 



22 

tonishment to behold a child who but a very few weeks before, had 
launched forih in my presence to take her first walk around the 
room, without the aid of any thing to support her or by which she 
could cling to in that her first attempt? What? I ask was my 
astonishment to behold that child sit down the moment I bade her 
and pull her coats from under her feet in the precise manner in 
which I had told her — arise to her feet unmolested by her coats 
and then walk to me. To what were these infants indebted for 
such an expansion of their infant minds? To the force alone of 
a proper educatorial care. It was ever my habit to talk to infants 
as to grown persons. Ever in continuance, to name every word 
I addressed to them, as clearly and distinctly, as I ever was in the 
habit of doing to persons up in years. To this I could alone at- 
tribute such results, and would to God, that parents would follow 
such examples, for most assuredly, results similar would be the 
offsprings of their constant care in this respect. How shock- 
ing. How utterly at variance with every principle of right, to 
hear a father, a mother or a nurse mincing every word uttered 
to a child from the time of its birth, until it is four or five years 
old, instilling into its youthful mind improprieties of speech and 
vulgarisms, that all the art of well qualified teachers and their 
own exertions added, can never erase from the mind or tongue 
during a whole life time thereafter, — oh shame ! 

Lead on a time (after years of absence) in searching for a school 
to settle down at a schoolhouse situated on a farm on which re- 
sided (ata paternal uncle's) alittle daughter of a (Dr. — ) once most 
excellent (but then a deceased) friend, who bearing the impress of 
a father in her nature and the express image of his face in its 
every lineament, it is perhaps needless to state, that she became 
not only a particular favorite, but a very interesting, little com- 
panion. Why ? Because, when I looked upon the child, I could 
behold the face of my deceased friend — of a deceased father, in 
this little, nature gilded mirror of artless simplicity. Because 
nature and nature's God had endowed her with any thing else than 
a dumb spirit. She possessed an expanding mind and an en- 
larged understanding for one of her years (eight years old,) and 
her capacity being a good one, she improved in a very rapid man- 
ner (with an advantage only of instruction in common with 
her class mates in school hours) and gave great promise. To what 
was this attributable, she received no more lessons and no more 
care at my hands when in school than any other scholar ? It was 
attributable to the advantages arising out of a continued converse 
with myself, counsels and instructions (not in the use of books) 
bestowed out of school. Improved rapidly, yes, in a three fold 
degree over all others of her age, (males and females) in the same 



23 

school — acquired knowledge rapidly, yes, so much so, as to war- 
rent the expression, that she drank in instructions at ray hands 
like water. I suppose I was not without the charge of partiality 
being preferred against me by certain envious persons, but what 
of that, I educated her not at the expense of justice to any other 
man's child. She was not suffered to treat any man's child with 
injustice on that account. In my own course I had nothing to 
upbraid myself with. After being under my care for some time, 
she like most other children would, showed a willingness to take 
advantage of ray kindness, and take her own course. She was not 
of a turbulent or obstinate temper, -but thinking in her confidence 
in me (looking to me as a parent) that I would not enforce obe- 
dience and for a time became obstinate, I called her back to her 
duties in a gentle but firm tone, but she persisted in keeping her 
position as firmly as I kept mine. I procured a very slender 
tickling switch, (the best weapon ever used in a school-room) 
and offered a free pardon for ofTences should she return to her duty. 
In consequence of my known attachments to her and the confidence 
placed in me she still refused. I at length used the rod, giving 
her not exceeding three cuts upon her shoulders, when she re- 
sponded to the question, will you cease to disobey and return to 
your duty by answering, "I will." It was with the greatest re- 
luctance that I resorted to the use of the rod. It was as dag- 
gers implanted within her, and her grief was immoderate and of 
that cast, that in the fulness of her heart it was like to break. Af- 
ter permitting her to retain her great mental agony for a time, 
the proper balm was tendered and accepted and the whole affair 
was forgotten. From that time, she never sought to take any 
advantage of ray kindness and indulgence, but was as perfectly 
submissive in her obedience from a willing sense of her duty to 
me, herself and to her school-mates as any other child in my 
school, and indeed, I may state more so. 

Last and not least, one whom I often nursed in infancy whilst 
residing in a family in another section of the country and who 
in a state of infancy gave strong proofs of its fond attachment, as 
well as of wisdom and strenorth of intellect. This little girl I 
have often had under my care as a pupil at several different pe- 
riods since. She is entirely different in her nature from other 
members of her father's family. She too, possesses a mind that is 
rapidly expanding, and an enlarged understanding for one of her 
years. Her capacity for the reception of knowledge by a proper 
instruction bids fair, to be high, broad, long and deep. Wisdom 
is already deep seated within her. Nature gentle, passive, play- 
ful and innocent as a lamb, and without hazarding any thing by 
making the declaration, she could be pitted against seven out 



24 

of ten of the fence corner school-masters and school-mistresses, 
(who are thought by many to be the real simons and Judy's pure) 
lor correctness in pronouncing a great majority of words in the 
English Language, although she is now but twelve years old. 

" What I most prize in woman is her" purity, her artlessness, 
hersimplicity, her gentleness, her sincerity, herconfidence — her af- 
fection, her intellect and her devotion. "Compare me with the 
great men of the earth — what am I ? Why a pigmy among giants. 
But if thou lovest me — mark me, I say lovest — the greatest of 
thy sex excels thee not ! The world of the affections is thy world 
— not that of man's ambition. In that stillness" — the stillness 
of a mind richly endowed — in that stillness of a heart rightly 
trained, and " which most becomes a woman, calm and holy," 
thou who art all love, all gentleness and all perfection in sweet- 
ness of temper, purity of heart and of soul — big M'ith affections, 
and designs not less, in the greatness of thy fond and unchanging 
fidelity. Thou, Virgin daughter, "thou sittest by the fireside of 
the heart feeding its flame." The golden bright element of fire 
is pure. It cannot change nor hide its nature, but burns as bright 
in a Gipsy camp, as in a palace hall." 

Parents, is it not as easy for you to speak your words dis- 
tinctly and properly to your children when in infancy and child- 
hood, as it is to mince them in the barbarous manner, that too 
many of you do ? How many of you entrust your children whole- 
ly and solely to domestics, many of w^hom know as much about 
pronouncing the most common of words properly as a horse 
knows about dancing Jim Crow — are under the continued show- 
ering influences of their (for the most part) unintelligible gab- 
lings. Myself when in infancy and childhood, was entrusted 
too much to the care of one of the most kind, careful, good and 
truly religious of free coloured women (old Patience) and I know 
I suffered a wrong by it, and whilst I shall live I never shall be able 
to divest myself altogether of improper abbreviations of (or 
cant) words and phrases obtained, the force of habits established 
in infancy is most powerful — mighty and prevails. I know and 
can freely attest it, that I was much in the society of my mother 
and by far more her companion when in infancy, childhood and 
boyhood than children are the companions of mothers, generally, 
at the present day. Had my mother taken pains to have cor- 
rected what I received of an incorrect nature at the hands of my 
very worthy and well loved, goodly old coloured guardian. Pa- 
tience, I in all likelihood would have been nought else, than the 
recipient of great good at her hands. 

Parents, will no advice prove salutary. Be wise and defer not 
the taking of this one step, which will lead you from the most 



2» 

Unparralled ridiculous, I mean those who are in the habit of minc- 
ing their words ; I have no room for a string of examples as long 
perhaps as Professor Morse's 'relegraphic wires. Let a few ex- 
amples then suffice. Wattee for water, soogee for sugar, bed for 
bread, seep and seepee for sleep and sleepy, muzzee for mother, hi 
for sky, hosscc for horse, trcct for street &,c. — which will lead you 
from the most unparralled ridiculous practice, to that which may in 
time be hailed as the sublime. It is said, that there is but one 
step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and sure I am, that many 
parents take it with the most unthinking and heedless eagerness. 
Be wise and pronounce your words properly, clearly and distinct- 
ly for your children's ears, and not affectedly (for this destroys 
both beauty and effect) as so many of you do. I have never 
yet seen children prosper under the cultivating hand of a mother 
when a single word or hundreds of single words were made each 
to constitute a mouthful. This instead of looking big and being 
big, looks little :ind is little in every sense. 

Parents be wise, set your ears faithfully (at all times) in order 
to catch every improper word and phrase falling from the lips 
of your children and then apply the correctives. This ought to 
be a pleasurable employment with parents. I always encouraged 
my pupils in speaking out to each other in school in that mild, 
kind, amiable and friendly manner which characterizes brothers 
and sisters in a well governed private family. I always have 
been and shall be, an open and avowed enemy to wliispering in 
schools. For children to be thus restrained is unnatural and unne- 
cessary, and that which is unnatural, is both unprofitable and iniuri- 
ous. The habit is monarchical, tyrannical and oppressive, it 
smothers and destroys the pure spirit of natural and acquired free- 
douj. It is a lazy mode of teaching, and its easing a teacher in 
making his labors and duties less, and barring the speedy cultiva- 
tion of the minds of children, is all that I can conceive such a prac- 
tice good for. I have always permitted my pupils to interchange 
words so loud as to be heard by myself; and I never allowed myself 
to be either so busily or lazily engaged in my duties as to close 
my ears against words imp.operly pronounced, or bar my tongue 
from correcting such (and all other) errors instantcr. I will be 
told that my habit will not suit large public schools, ushers sta- 
tioned at different places in a large room would be able to per- 
form the same lofty and truly beneficial duty, without any increase 
of loudness upon the part of scholars. If this cannot be done, 
then let us get back to the old fashioned (and by far the best) 
system, lesser buildings and a less number of scholars. 

Parents, be wise and make the fountain of your words for your 
children pure, rich and chaste, and the streams of after life \rill 
4 



2»' 

continue to flow on uninterrupted in their crystal purities in na- 
ture's channels towards the unfathomable depths of the oceans 
ofintelligence — of all admired, prized, loved, useful and sublime 
knowledge. 

There is no channel of instruction so productive of happy re- 
sults as that of a peaceful, quiet and orderly one. The child that 
is always kept peaceful, happy and at home within itself (if it 
has any share of intellect and competent instructors) cannot but 
learn and learn rapidly, whilst unfortunately constitutioned child- 
ren, upon whom no care is bestowed in efforts to eradicate angry 
or fretful feelings, are every day more fretted or vexed (and as 
often purposely as not, by many teachers) will not and cannot im- 
prove. Well may it be said, that " no emotion of mind tends 
more to brutali;^e, than violent paroxysms of passion." Anger^ 
oh how pernicious, how it enervates every nerve — every organ of 
the body, how it destroys their functions and undermines health. 
" It is well authenticated by physicians, that beauty has no dead- 
lier foe than passion.* It subjects the most potent in physical 
energy to premature decay," and it has in very many instances 
produced instantaneous death. It blunts the finer feelings, sours 
the mind and dij".positions, "clouds the judgment, enervates the 
mind (in all respects) and jeopardizes the soul." 

*' Who does not look back to the days of his childhood, with 
mingled sensation of pleasure and regret ; pleasure at the absence 
of the cares of life, and regret that those halycon days were not 
better improved. There is in childhood a holy ignorance, a beau- 
tiful credulity, a sort of sanctity," (notwithstanding folly that is 
bound up in the heart often shows itself we may slate, in acts of 
wickedness or seemingly wicked acts) " that one cannot contem- 
plate without something of the reverential feeling with which one 
should approach beings of a celestial nature. The impress of 
the divine nature is, as it were, fresh on the infant spirit, fresh 
and unsullied by contact with this withering world. One trem- 
bles lest an impure breath should dim the clearness of its bright 
mirror. And how perpetually must those who are in the habit of 
contemplating childhood, of studying the characters of little 
children, feel and repeat to their own hearts, ' of such is the king- 
dom of heaven.' Which of us, of the wisest among us, may not 

*Think of this (some of you) mothers when you siifTcr your children in infancy and 
chiiclliuoci Xoyell for an hour at a tune, without appro. 'Ching Ihein with r<'asoM, commnn 
sensi-, mildness or parental trnderness in efTbrls to i)acify Inem. Parents .•.ulFer not any 
persons to wantonly fr.t your children for it is not presnnied that 3-cu will di-liglit in 
doing it yoursilvcs Think of this parents, when you are brawling and contending 
with your children — when you are binding burdens upon them in uncoraelv and harsh 
expressions — burdens, which )ou could not begin to bear yourselves. Never forget 
cvrn once, ttiat you once possessed juvenile natures yourselves, and nercr forget for a 
moment this truth, that juvenile, ia not matured nature. 



27 

stop to receive instruction and rebuke from the character of a 
little child? Which of us, by comparison with its smiling sim- 
plicity, has not reason to blush for the bitterness, the insincerity, 
the worldliness, the degeneracy of his own." 

" Education does not commence with the alphabet. It begins 
with a mother's look — with a father's nod of approbation, or a 
sign of reproof — with a sister's gentle pressure of the hand, or a 
brother's noble acts of forbearance" — with a master — with a 
mistress or parents intellectual and almost imperceptible distil- 
ling dews of mental richness thrown, around and upon the tender 
plants, — culturing influences brought into lively exercise when 
out of a school-room — by raising the curiosity and sharpening 
the appetites of children for intellectual food and then fully satis- 
fying them, taking great care however not to overload the stom- 
achs of their minds (if I may so express myself;) by cramming 
them with huge masses or loads of indigestible matter. Mere a 
little and there a little, and then by starting some innocent juve- 
nile amusements in which they (parents or tutors) can bear a 
part (no father, mother or tutor ever lost any thing yet, in mak- 
ing themselves little children's companions for a time) and al- 
ways let their ears be faithfully set to enable them to correct er- 
rors, and their tongues ever ready with mild, suasive and peace- 
ful counsels and gentle admonitions. 

Education begins not with books and the rigid Bug-Bear dis- 
cipline of a school. It begins " with handsfidl of flowers, in 
green dells, on hills and in daisy meadows — with bird's nests ad- 
mired, but not touched — with creeping ants and almost imper- 
ceptible emmets" — with butterflies, golden bugs, glow worms, 
fire-flies and with other numerous insects, for whom the law of hu- 
manity is to be read and enforced upon the minds ofjuvenile admir- 
ers, telling them never to set " a foot needlessly or wantonly" 
upon these little helpless inhabitants of earth and air — that 
" mercy to" them that "show" mercy " is the rule" — teach them 
to place them in some lonely place where they might be likely 
to be safe and be able to perform their rounds in nature, as was 
designed them by their great Creator. My mother taught me 
this duty, and I would think I had made a fearful declension from 
the path of tenderness and rectitude, and sacrificed and set at 
naught the sweetest instructions of an able instructress, if I would 
not willingly go out of ray road to do it still. 

Education begins with chiming rills — with gurgling streams 
and their bright sporting finny inhabitants — with lofty forests — 
mountain knobs — green knolls and their sweet singing birds — 
with waving grain-fields — " with humming bees and glass bee- 
hives — with pleasant walks in shady lanes — and with thoughts 



28 

directed in sweet and kindly tones and words, to nature, to 
beauty, to acts of benevolence, to deeds of virtue, and to the 
sense of all good, to God himself," in praise of his goodness, 
his bounty, his wisdom, his power, his majesty and his glory. 

" Ye flocks that haunt the humble vale, 

Te insects fluttering on the gale. 

In mutual concourse rise ; 

Crop the gay rose's vermeil bloom, 

And waft its spoils, a sweet perfume. 

In incense to the skies." 

The fseason of virtuous female youth, what is it? The rain- 
bow of promise — the rainbow of human existence which exhibits 
the rich and lucid primitive colours of humanity — the halo of 
perfection in all that is innocently gay, lively, beautiful, and cap- 
tivating in truth, in symmetry, in loveliness, in innocence, in 
purity and in holiness — the finest fibral (although not strongest*) 
of nature's most exquisite tenderness in a state of earthly exist- 
ence. " Young womanhood ! the sweet moon on the horizon's 
verge, a thought matured but not uttered ; a conception warm 
and glowing, not yet embodied ; the rich halo which precedes the 
rising sun ; the rosy down that bespeaks the ripening peach ; a 
flower"— 

'' A flower which is not quite a flower, 
Yet is no more a bud." 

" Virtue" (an appellation bestowed upon the sex) " is both a 
title and an estate, a title the most exalted" except that of mod- 
esty, a twin grace (the most luxuriant and matured of the two) 
but based upon virtue as its pedestal. What colouring in nature 
can vie with that — the suffused cheek of a blushing, artless and 
innocent daughter of virtuous Modesty. Virtue — Modesty "a 
title the most exalted, because it is God who confers it ; virtue — 
modesty " an estate the most rich, because it" is the most en- 
during — " it endures forever. Envy may not derogate the title, 
because it is written in the book of Heaven ; and fraud cannot 
diminish the estate, because no sin can reach it." 

" Beauty soon fades," "T have seen the blushing rose unfold- 
ing its tender leaves to meet the warm gaze of the morning sun, 
and have almost envied in my volatile gaiety the beauty and in- 
nocence of the flower. But when I retired at evening, and stop- 

*The unyieldinjr, unchanging; and undying strength of nature's tenderness belongs to 
— Mother. For let all earth frown upon her child, forsaUe and persecute wiih an un- 
heard of hand ofhar-hness, severity and cruelly — and ulihough srreat lolly should tn:i>k 
the stoppings of the wanderer from the paths of rectitude she will be found standing the 
firm, loni! and unshaken lofty pyramid of a true, exalted, glorious and unrivalled affec- 
tion of heart, n.iy her very soul is incorporated in the holy admixture — an affection th^t 
aU earth is challenged to produce its parallel. 



29 

ped to give a passing look al the flower, it was gone — some rude 
hand had dashed it to the ground, and I left it with a sigh, ex- 
claiming, " Beauty soon fades." I have seen those whose morn- 
ing sun rose bright in an unclouded horizon, and those whose 
path was sparkling with hope, and anticipation of pleasures al- 
ready begun — and yet, ere that sun was far advanced towards 
the meridian, it was veiled with all the melancholy darkness of 
midnight.* 

Nature's jiurcst satisfyina; wafers softly and silently springs. 

And trickles in limpid cooling streams from each crevic'd rock. 

So Virginal Modesty's ecstacy of pleasures on out.-^preading wings, 

Asright handf ( Wisdom's) finest fibral " refreshments wait" natures pure " floek." 

How oft the lonely flower by the hedge's wild side. 

Can vie in WISDOM, lovi-liness and purity with the garden's gayest pride, 

MoeS-rose violet — hearts ease, daisies and cowslips so sweet, 

" Lowliest children" — with lessons of purity are ever replete. 

" Observe the rising lily's" pure and naodest " snowy grace," 

Observe nature's vermeil sufi'usion on Modesty's face. 

Flowers that toil not to excel, but in nature careless do grow. 

And oh! in nature, how warmly they blush, how brightly "they glow," 

What bespangled " regal vestments can with " these flowers " compare" 

Was ever Solomon so shining or queen Sheba so fair. 

Not so with the embolden'd , that VIRTUE'S modest tints do not prize, 

A hypocritical personification of nature — of modesty can't cheat Inspiration'* eyet. 

Nature, nature her own lov'd and sweet language expresses. 

Ad exotic she knows not, nor ventures forth in borrow'd dresses.^ 

Wisdom's justified and prais'd always, of her children wise, pure and dear. 
And the Lord knoaeth his own, tho' he maj' seem not to be near, 
A thousand years are as one day with him for the redeem'd. 
And ten tlwxisand miles as tho', no distance interven'd. 

Mark this sweetest virtues, and travel the safe and sure road. 

That leads to the Inspirational Fountain and high hills of your God, 

Let others do as they will, be cheerful — prayerful — virtuous— alone. 

And the blessings of health, peace, life and glory sweet Modesty shall be thine own. 



•That this is so very often, is infinitely more the fault of the possessor than of the 
Lord — than he who intended beautv and innocence to besynonimous in nature — than he 
who created beauty not to be tho riglil hand of Lucifer in j)ri(le — than he who ensures 
beauty not for vanity's sake — than he who ensures it not lor the piirpose as a mean of 
destroying the last trace of alfoction, graiiludu and fidi-liij' — than he who prolongs it, 
not to be the continual companiim and wastes of the gazr and \hc flatter]) of fools — than 
he who ble>se8 the possessor, not that the bark max be turned in coiileropt upon and that 
the nose may be turned up in the scornful feelings of a full, loalhsoaic and deccpiious 
spirit of this world upon the glory of his Christ and the power of his supreme love and 
salvation, 

fThe " wise man" makes the Right Hand the personificrof himself— wisdom, pure 
and guileless. 

^n the language of Ben Johnson to Sylrester. " If" this piece is not poetrjr it is 
truth ! 



30 

Be faithful ia all things, love the sure and true guide, the law of the heart. 
Look anxiously —ardently and as your province is, so act well your part 
Your KEV press it closely — with desires, strung, full, overflowing and keen 
Eye the TEMPLiE hope's goal, that's emboss'd in 's greeu. 

Short lir'd and sickly at best are deserters and traitors lengtben'd lives. 

And short liv'd truck, the honors and glories of those who a Nazareue's glory despise. 

Thrice welcontie are they, to all that through Genius they can reach. 

They have forfeited all claim to their landing on Colunabia's beach. 

I wish my readers to understand that I have made some 
additions occasionally to the body of the present lecture since 
its delivery. As a Saviour has made some additions to his 
Heritage (not the church,) 1 feel desirous that more may be in- 
itiated into the ranks of the free, pure and Independeyxt. The 
blessing is ready, not for fools, but for the wise, who will keep 
their lamps trimmed and oil in their vessels with their lamps, and 
to do this, it is not necessary to put on a long, vacant and sorrow- 
ful, but nature's cheerful and brighten'd face, although I am free 
to admit indeed, that with some of those thinking themselves 
most safe^ a rueful, long, sorrowful, disappointed and sickly coun- 
tenance becomes them well. I am not to be understood as mean- 
ing those suffering from bodily sickness or pains, I suffer myself 
very often and most acutely too, with a distressing affection of 
heart, and no doubt the fashion of the countenance is changed, 
but this shall not mar the face and countenance of Faith's plea- 
surable hopes. Mercy's face is bright, true Religion, Hope and 
Heaven are so too, and it is not necessary that travellers thither 
should darken their faces by the way. It argues a poor faith 
and an animalcule hope. 

The author tenders the good counsels of Genius to all, males 
as well as females, but more especially to Wives, Daughters 
— Fathers and Brothers who may be specially visited by the In- 
visible Guardian of the Glory of the Messiah. If the wise of 
Europe have heard gladly the mighty sounds of Columbia's God 
and came at the bidding of the Almighty Grand Master of the 

order of the , surely some of the inhabitants of my country 

who are not singing glory to Babylon's Mistress might (pure 
daughters especially) listen to the flaming Minister of the glory 
of that Columbia's God. I have one glorious advantage over 
those that may give me the lie — some there are that have listen- 
ed and their march is onward to the earthly port of Eternal Ma- 
jesty. More of you may be blest by grounding the weapons of 
your rebellion and make home the Pavilion of your God. 

Little youthful daughters have already made known to Genius 
the sum and substance of their received counsels and their faith 



31 

in their God, and in a manner that would put daughters who have 
arrived at the years of maturity and mother's of families to the 
blush. To those and others tender ds they are in age, I can with 
freedom reiterate the language of their counsellor, " fear not 
little daughter" and state also, receive the counsels in thoughts 
within your own minds of your best, sweetest and most faitliful 
friend. Samuel's mighty calling and counselling God still lives. 
Drink deep, the fountains of counsel, of Faith and of HOPE'S 
pleasures are opened unto you. Obey faithfully and without fear 
in all things. 

Mothers of Prayer and faithfulness, the declaration, " Whatev- 
er is to be, will and must 6e" is an old and stale song, too stale 
for Genius. Christ the living God conquered death and Genius 
would not give a straw for that faith which will not allow that 
Christ to do with death whatsoever he wills to do. Mothers, 
remember there are two words in death's vocabulary Prema- 
ture and Untimely at both of which (with help) Genius strikes. 
Pray then with reference to your children's preservation in life — 
with a full sense in reference to the stately steppings and almighty 
strength of a Supreme Majesty within your Columbia. Remem- 
ber that the most efiicacious of all piayers are the secret closet 
supplications of HOME. Mothers, the time to prepare for war 
is in time of peace. Dont let go the HORNS of the eternal 
THRONE of God, but lay up a stock of faithful prayer ahead. 
Let others do as they will, do you attend to this, and your re- 
ward is before you proportionate to your faith in your God. — 
Wives, daughters — mothers, fathers and brothers, one glorious 
trait (besides I was going to state, the greater trait CHARITY) 
in the Institutions of Patriotic Brotherhoods, FKEP^ MASONRY 
and ODD-FELLOWSPUP is the willino and honorable dovo- 
tion and fidelity with which the Orders preserve the sacred se- 
crets of their holies of holies. It is most admirable, notwith- 
standing they have been persecuted and hunted like unto the wild 
bears of Siberia, and have been slandered in the malignancy of 
self-created wrath. 'Jhey are not the dangerous Institutions they 
have been represented to be. They are cursed it is true, like the 
Divine Institutions of a true and Holy Religion, by having scabs 
in their midst, but this should not condemn the Orders. Their 
Ensigns Armorial they have flung to the four corners of the world 
and on them I find are emblems of four, high in the Order of 
Heaven, MERCY, HOPE, FAITH and CHARITY. They have 
thrown out a light exemplary upon a Hill — doing good — works 
of faith — of charity — of love — of unselfish benevolence to man 
and of devotion to God. Where did these spring from — but from 
HIM who said, "on these hang all the law and the prophets." 



32 

Genius, who, never has had to do with either Iraternily in being at 
member of either can state, had he the one hundredlli part of the 
evidence that others profess to have of their being dangerous to 
the liherties of his country, he would be the first at them, with 
ihejire and tongs of prayer at the Throne of God. On the con- 
trary, he has uninterruptedly throug;h life, extended to them the 
sincere and warm right hand of good Fellowship and Friendship, 
particularly, in thedays oftheir greatest persecutions, andhe would 
state to them now, go on and fear not, let the greatest poss.ible 
care be taken to purify the Orders. Be the true and exalted friends 

of my Columbia and of the Messiah, and an infinitely in 

reality (beyond the eternal calculations of men of angels) above 
that oi emblems hip in eternal matchless purity and brilliancy of 
glory shall be shared with them by one who will share it as a 
Brother with all those making themselves worthy of its Heaven- 
ly bright and hallowed presence. There is a Columbian holy of 

holies^ and therein is it and others of the Order of Genius' 

God deposited. The Mason, Odd-Fellow (or others) blest with 
its or the presence of others of its kind would be (if not loud) 
long in exclamation of joy, of praise, of honor, of gratitude and 
of glory to the only Messiah, Supreme Majesty of the Heavens 
and the Earth — my Columbia's Divine Head. 

Wives, daughters — mothers, fathers and brothers, Genius is 
nature's Free Mason and Odd-Fellow of his God. Should any 
of you be initiated by the Spirit — the dove of the Trinity into 

the Order of Genius' God, with what willingness and 

truly honorable fidelity and devotion will you guard the Eternal 
Three^s, Fraternity, Encampment and grand secrets of its HOLI- 
EST of all HOLIES. One thing known, certain and true, that 
the unworthy cannot accompany Genius to the third Plain of his 
Science, and there behold the HIGH, BEAUTIFIED and eter- 
nally GREEN HILLS of ETERNAL HOLINESS. Do you 
be faithful in all things. Remember you are not to follow your 
false prophets and false Chn'sfs, the world is full of them^your 
country is full of them, and remember the w-nrds of the Lord 
God ; " Be still and know that I am God.^^ The Patriot's own 
best and best loved country is his HOME. Remember the mot- 
to of Genius is, HOME, COUN TRY, COUNTRY'S FRIENDS, 
PEACE and the reigning MESSIAH of GOD. 

Duty friends, and let those follow the counsels oi Balaam that 
choose to do so, and that choose to oppose Genius with disre- 
spect, with spite, with enmity, with hate, with nieanness, with 
injustice, with cruelty and with wrongs, and a few years in the 
future will tell of them as the past has told oftheir fellow work- 
ers — those who have acted the same ungenerous, unfaithful and 



33 

Ungrateful part towards him, but why comphiin, the Grand Mus- 
ter of all assemblies was ill treated without cause upon his part. 
Go ask ihe'ir graves and they will answer, the place that knew 
us once, knows us now, no more forever. He has been i^ent into 
the world and has labored many years for his country and his 
God in silence and in suffering — has been sent into the woild to 
be its blessing, and to be loved, faithfully and honorably, 
' — as a friend of his country, of mankind and as a servant of his 
God, and not of HUiMBUGS — to be faithfully, honorably and 
justly dealt with, and not treacherously, meanly and ungratefully. 

Praj'erful mothers and virtuous prayerful daughters, in your 
closet supplications remember your friend, — the friend ofhiscoun- 
try and Divine Head of his country's Government — the Supreme 
Invisible Sovereign Ruling Majesty EMMANUEL Prince of 
Peace. 

Gentleness and sweetness of temper and refinement of mind 
should bo ardently sought after by all classes in society, but par- 
ticularly by youthful females, for to women — mothers, belong the 
arduous duties of forming the minds and affections of children 
and establishing habits that are to last through life. Early im- 
pressions must be remembered are lasting, and as the natural 
bent or bias of mind and inclinations of heart are established in 
childhood to good or to evil, so show they themselves generally 
through life. 

Gentleness and sweetness of temper and refinement of mind 
are ornaments which not only adorn and embellish the posses- 
sors but they cast a pleasing and peaceful shade around society. 
A society formed of such noble materials, and their concomitants 
would be lasting, and in their potent influence and durability 
would be glorious. 

Gentleness, cheerfulness, sweetness of temper, i)iety and re- 
finement of mind combined, constitutes a powerful catholicon, a 
panacea good against all the diseases of anger, envy and malevo- 
lence. A universal medicine that can be purchased at the low 
price of a little mental exertion, merely at the expense of culti- 
vating. Sweetness of temper, a grand specific that cannot but 
have a very great tendency to heighten our zest for all those ra- 
tional amusements and enjoyments of life which we are at liberty 
to partake of with freedom. Let us picture to ourselves a young 
person with whom wc have had an acquaintance, sour and morose 
indisposition, one on whose brow illnature sits brooding from 
morn till night, and were it possible to behold the sleeping mo- 
ments of such an one it is to be presumed it would be found seat- 
ed from night till morn. Look at the little laughing loves you 
encounter at every turn and winding of a country, and particular- 
5 



ly of a city life. Playful little girls and little boys, the microcosm 
of human existence in miniature likeness in many respects. — 
Plavful little girls and little boys. Why me thinks if these little 
juvenile Divines — Preachers of innocence were more noticed, their 
pleadings in favor of innocence, affection, kindness, confidence, 
gentleness, cheerfulness, &c. were heard and their doctrines re- 
ceived, stored uj) and properly applied and practised by the 
grown, we would have ten thousand times ten thousand times more 
gentleness, cheerfulness, innocence, true civility, true morality, 
true piety, true religion, true friendship and kindness in our midst 
than we are blessed with or likely to be blessed with. When I 
behold men (not men) driving and dashing along a pavement 
and in their drivings throwing children right and left, often whirl- 
ing them partly off their feet, I set such persons down as brutes 
and not men. And if some of my readers would take particular 
notice they would find some of their modern preachers turning 
up their noses and their very reverend ladies too often times at 
these juvenile obstacles in their way or sailincr grounds. Truth 
will bear to be told. I have seen some latlies (pardon me,) 
who would have people think that they v;ere really of conse- 
quence in society driving past little children when the pave- 
ments at that or those particular spots were not obstructed by 
grown persons, drive little children by their ill used overstrength 
even off the pavements and over the curb stones, and never look 
back itself to see whether a child had fell or not, forcing me by 
an involuntary act of the will to stop and look at and aKer them 
to see, whether they were not some animals (and not women) 
dressed up in petticoats. I have seen some persons at this, who 
are " regular built" Christians according to modern definitions, 
and I have wondered if ever they thought seriously about getting 
to heaven, — whether there existed a possibility of their getting 
there at all — to the abodes where " little children" dwell, when 
they are so pitiably contemptible towards their presence and so- 
ciety in this life. If tlicy argue heaven to themselves, I am yet 
unacquainted with their mode of reasoning. Perhaps the world 
would be benefitted by an exposition of the ascending properties 
of their new ladder. What should it matter to me, as to whose 
child I should meet, poor or rich, black or white. What inno- 
cence is more prized in the sight of a Crucified God, than a child 
like innocence and harmlessness. None, unless it be that of 
Angels, but of their innocence I cannot be a judge, all I can state 
is, that if their innocence excels that possessed by the sweetest 
innocent in a state of childhood, they must be superb celestials 
indeed. 

Were I to seek for the most efficient earthly antidote orconso- 



35 

latlon, good against all the coldness of the world, its frowns, its 
rifrid, sordid and pompous reproaches and reproachful looks, the 
ra"-e and insults of the lawless and the wM'ath of devils, where do 
you suppose I would look for it? Where would I obtain it? I 
answer in the society of little children. Others no doubt would 
forestall me and answer — in the society of wife. They would 
speak their experience obtained in Hymen's department, and in 
doing so they would have a decided advantage over me, for the 
tender and love begetting but fickle and brawling god (as he 
must be acknowledged to be sometimes, judging from some of 
his disciples as chip specimens of the old block) has not so rich- 
ly blest me nor yet entailed upon me his anathema maranatha oi 
conjugal cursation. 

Young persons cannot be too careful in guarding against the 
entrance of moroseness, ill will or the acid spite of malevolence 
— this disturber of society's peace — hate, the mother of turbu- 
lence. What can be expected from persons possessing these dis- 
positions — possessors of a sullen dejection, can a person be hap- 
py in their company — converse with them freely, especially if 
they should cap all with the descending and ridiculous flight not 
of wise fancy, but of affectation, that thin veil which instead of 
hiding imperfections becomes the trumpeter to expose them the 
more with its intelligible sounds — sounds so well understood by 
the wise and prudent of nature's children. A natural look if there 
is intelligence within, becomes not a vacant stare. A natural 
speech, a natural voice — the prettiest speech, the sweetest voice 
— the most welcome, admired, prized, loved and correct. Is it 
at all reasonable to suppose that a mind otherwise gifted, or a 
heart otherwise drilled could desire to be linked in habitual inti- 
macy with such, I apprehend not. If a jierson that is desirous to 
possess those refinements of mind alluded to, cannot enjoy a de- 
gree of satisfaction in company with the illnatured or cat-humor- 
ed, much less it is presumed would be enjoyed by an illnatured 
person in company with another of like temperaments of mind 
and dispositions of heart. Many are willing to, and often do, 
class dejection with that of a sour and morose disposition, but 
they are to be viewed as two separate and distinct qualities of 
mind and of heart. How often can be seen the melancholy air of 
dejection seated upon the brows of the tenderest plants in crea- 
tion, — Mothers bereft of children — wives, mothers, sisters of near 
and dear relatives — of all that gave promise in loveliness, in 
goodness and of worth, or who have had their whole subsistence 
in life perhaps, swept away by narrow hearted leeches of black 
injustice and villainous cruelty. Females whose dispositions of 
rnind, heart and sotil were made up of the best materials. Fe- 



36 

males who never knew what kind of feelings those feelings are, 
which the turbulent possess, but whose minds are wrecked, whose 
hearts are wrung and whose souls are sunk and made heavy by 
sorrow, in short, whose hearts are crushed in an agony of mental 
sufferings. Place persons of envious and splenetic dispositions 
i;i their stead to buffet with misfortune in many shapes, and what 
would be the consequence? Neither peace nor tranquillity, nor 
sorrow's joys, for sorrow hath her joys, the joys of hope and peace, 
as well as misery, hath her tears, and happy, nay joyous are tears, 
that are not the tears of penitence — neither peace nor tranquilli- 
ty at home, whilst abroad, the mind would be ruminating, filled 
Avith the forebodings of future ill. The human family is made up 
of a great variety of persons and yet no two persons possess ex- 
actly, like dispositions and affections of mind or of heart and all 
being fallible, it is not to be expected that they can be divested 
of, or freed from many imperfections that human nature is subject 
to, but they should endeavor to cultivate those dispositions and 
affections of mind and of heart which would undoubtedly exalt 
them (not merely) in the estimation of the wise, good and virtu- 
ous of mankind but in the estimation of that God whose approval 
is so well worth seeking and which would prove to themselves a 
source of never failing and most refined pleasures. 

Gentleness, by a constant train of humane attentions, studies 
to alleviate the sufferings of the distressed — to remove the bur- 
den of common misery and the true characteristic of the good is 
gentleness. Piety that does not sweeten the natural temper and 
make it productive in acts of goodness, is compared to unripe 
fruit — good in its kindj but not arrived to perfection. The dis- 
position of men, of women, are in a greater or lesser degree irrit- 
able and do often become irritated, and if reason is not suffered to 
sway the sceptre of moral rule and religion, the rule of mercy, of 
justice and of right, anger begets those bad feelings which are 
too often seen displaying themselves and that stops not short of 
revenge. However just, we ought to ponder the matter well, 
ere we invite the spirit of retaliation to a seat in our hearts. — 
Trifling affronts or insults ought to be passed by (although 
often very vexing in their natures) because they will soon van- 
ish and leave the person insulted in the full possession of a mind 
calm and serene and a heart at home within itself, with this frame of 
spirit the mind can look back with a degree of pleasure, well 
knowing that by treating these little baits of misery in this man- 
ner it has escaped all the turmoil of passion which would have 
been engendered by an opposite course or followed as a conse- 
quence of a too hasty resentment of them. Certainly a degree 
of satisfaction can be enjoyed arising from a knowledge of the 
fact, of tyrannv, oppression and cruelty being conquered by their 



37 

own hands — that a mlssiie whilst being hurled at an individual 
rebounds and in rebounding pierces the person hurling it more 
deeply than they even intended it should have done, the person 
at whom was aimed the blow of malignancy. The mind being 
active must have food, — must have a subject for mental dissec- 
tion, and it appears very unreasonable that a higher ambition is 
not found in the mind or heart, than that of those ones upon which 
malevolence, envy and cruelty can feed voraciously. It seems 
very preposterous that no other subject can be upon the tapis 
than that in which spleen can derive satisfaction, and gentleness 
nought but a feeling of disgust — no subject that will admit of 
one pleasing emotion, but on the contrary, tends to make miser- 
able the feelings of others and in no way benefits the spirit of 
sourness, anger or illwill. 

"Oh ! (lid you hear in your nursery. 

The tale that the gossips tell. 
Of two young girls that came to drink 

At a certain fairy well ? 
The words of the youngest were as sweet 

As the smile of her ruby lip. 
But the tongue of the eldest seemed to move 

As if venom were on its tip. 

At the well a beggar accosted them, 

fA sprite in a mean disguise ;) 
The eldest spake with a scornful brow. 

The younj;est with tearful eyes ; 
Cried the Fairy, "whenever you speak, sweet girl, ^ 

Pure gems from your lips shall fall ; 
But whenever you utter a word, proud maid, 

From your tongue shall a serpent cruwl." 

And have you not met with these sisters oft 

In the haunts of the old and young? 
The first with her pure unsullied lip? 

The last with her serpent tongue ?" 
Yes, the first is charity who thinketh no ill, 

Her motto is truth — kindness her law. 
The la^t is suapicion, always lawless in will, 

For in every sim-shine of loveliness, she finds a dark flaw. 

Yes, the first is gentleness, sweetest of maids, 

Withamind refined and full, 
The last is folly, most arrant of jades 

Whose delight is i]/tng' and wicked misrule. 
"Yes — the_^rs<is good nature — diamonds bright 

On the darknest theme she throws ; 
And the last is slander — leaving the slime 

Of the snake wherever she jfoeg !" 



38 

*'The cultivation of the social affections tends not only to give 
a charm to life, but to dignify our nature, for in proportion as we 
become interested in each other, our selfish feelings abate, and 
we approach more nearly the attributes of that Being whose love 
is universal." 

As an encouragement to young females to seek the paths of 
learnincr, and persevere therein. I would instance the following 
*' galaxy of Genius in the fair sex," to which might be added 
the name of that sweet poet of her day, Mrs. Hemans, and the 
names of many of her contemporaries and others who have gain- 
ed a celebrity as writers since the earthly star of her existence 
has descended below the horizon of this life — descended never 
again to enliven the living with its numberless rays of brilliancy 
xmtil the resurrectional spring season of eternity shall come — 
shall call forth intellect's sweet bards and minstrels to chant 
forth in unending strains the praises of the Great Jehovah and 
his redeeming love, as exhibited and dispensed in the expiatory 
sacrifice of the Son of his love as a complete ATONEjVIENT. 
Mrs. Barbauld, Miss Hannah Moore, Mrs. Radcliffe, Miss 
Edgeworth, Miss Cullen, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Inchbald, Miss Hut- 
ton, JMiss H. M. Williams, Mrs. Cappe, Miss Porter, Miss Ben- 
ger. Miss Grant, Mrs. Marcet, Mrs. Lowry, Miss Owenson, 
Mrs. Wakefield, Mrs. Ibbetson, Miss Herschell, Miss Aikin, 
Miss Graham, M. D'Arbly, Miss Baillie. 

The following are American Female writers of acknowledged 
abilities : — Mary Davenant, Lydia M. Child, Mary E. Lee, Alice 
Hervey, Agness vSeymour, Lucy Hooper, Lydia H. Sigourney, 
Elizabeth Townsend, Miss Jackson, Miss Leslie, Miss C. Louisa 
M. Brawner, Miss E. C. Hurley, Miss Jane W. Frazer, Miss 
Anna Fleming, Miss Hannah F. Gould, Miss H. J. Whitman, 
Miss Charlotte Cushman, Mrs. S J. Hale, Mrs. Elizabeth F.' 
Ellet, Mrs. C. M. Sawyer, Mrs. Emma C. Embury, Mrs. Seba 
Smith, Mrs. Amelia B. Welby, Mrs. 'Ann S. Stephens, Mrs. 
Frances S. Osgood, Mrs. A. M. F. Annan, Mrs. Lydia J. Pier- 
son, Mrs. E. Oakes Smith, Mrs. V. E. Howard, Mrs. H. F. 
Lee. 

I am fully aware that there are many men occupying the first 
rank as teachers who will advocate and strenuously the " all po- 
tent" power of the birch dynasty. Men whose classical and sci- 
entific attainments I am no more able to imitate than I am will- 
inor to embrace their principles of discipline. That their learning 
makes them right, cannot be proved in evidence. With such 
then, I beg leave to differ and at the same time lo express my 
hope, that they will grant me a portion at least of what I ask, an 
acknowledgment, that truth, more or less is to be seen peeping 



39 

Iroin the basis of my principles and that on the broad banner she 
bears, (he motto stands in letters leijible and bold, there is a right 
way and a icrong one to cultivate the heart. 

" Delightful task to rear the tender thought, 
To teacli the young idea how to shoot." 

Why am I averse to the Birch family generally ? Because 
cudgels in school-houses are the ri<^ht hands of injustice, oppres- 
sion, tyranny and cruelly often, because they are the hand maid- 
ens oft to demoniac ignorance. A fool in a school-house is an 
absolute tyrant. A monarchical school-master in a school-room 
is a Jool, and to use a common place cxjiression a bug bear at 
that^ and less fit to be in the presence of juvenile innocence and 
the constant companion and monitor of that innocence than to 
have been the right liand, aider, abetter and companion of the 
supercdious blood-thirsty, mean, despicable and pusillanimous 
Cockburn, when committing his unmanly, wanton, wicked and 
inPiuman depredations along the sea-coasts of my country. 

What rod of affliction, I ask, is not borne with a becoming pati- 
ence when compared with that of the birchen wand? What af- 
flictions are not borne with admirable fortitude when compared 
with that of a cudgel well applied to the human back ? What 
dangers are met with less bravery of spirit ? Did ever a soldier 
recoil or shrink back in marching up to the cannon's mouth with 
half the repugnancy of feelings as is exhibited by the school boy 
or school gill when re])airing to a Master's or a Mistresses desk 
in order to receive the rod, ferule or taws — in order to receive his 
or her sentence of condemnation and punishment, that of mount- 
ing and standing an hour upon the academic pillory i. c. Dunce 
Block? A whole hour wasted upon a dunce block, how un- 
pardonable. A " good way" to make liars, cowards, sneaks, as- 
sassins, S)'c. Sj'c. The wand that becomes talismanic — all potent, 
and that instils knowledge, truth, virtue, moral courage, morali- 
ty, honor, patriotism, and religion into the mind and heart is (he 
much to be admired, loved, prized and sweet wiiming golden 
wand — the law of kindness. 

I do not stand alone and unsupported in my oj)inions and ex- 
perience as stated, I have some of the most apt and ripe scholars 
upon my side. Permit me to bring to your notice the opinions 
founded upon experience of that urbane, studious and eiticient 
scholar and teacher Mr. Samuel Kirkham, Lecturer on English 
Grammer, ICIocution, &c. " Government consists, not so much 
in a flourish of the rorf, as in the exercise of moral influence, 
grounded in respect and esteem. Raise the ambition of a youth 
by rendering his studies agreeable and inviting, and by causing 



40 

him to respect himself, and he is easily governed. " As far as 
light excelleth darkness," so doth kindness transcend severity, 
and encouragement, compulsion. " A gentle hand will lead even 
the elephant by a hair." Children and youth should be led along 
the path of knowledge, not driven. 

The wooden ao:e o{ beatws knowledge and obedience into the 

o o o 

heads and hearts of children, and youth by the exercise of the 
birch, the ferule and the cudgel, has nearly gone by. A brighter 
day now dawns upon them. The temple of wisdom is unlock- 
ed. The fountains of science are opened up, and are sending 
forth their pure streams in broader and deeper channels than the 
eye of our forefathers ever rested upon. The walks of literature 
are now literally strow'n with flowers." Flowers whose fragrance 
not only satisfies our mental appetites greatly, and regales our 
senses but invigorates. also our understandings with their balmy 
influences ; buoying us up above the grovelling propensities 
which attach themselves to a nature overgrow'n with, and drown- 
ed in ignorance. 

Corporeal punishments have generally a hardening effect on the 
minds both of young and old. A blacksmith brought up his son, 
to whom he was very severe^ to his own trade. The urchin was, 
nevertheless, an audacious dog. One day the old vulcan was 
attempting to harden a cold chisel which he had made of foreign 
steel, but could not succeed. '■'■ Hcrsewhip it, father," exclaim- 
ed the youth, " \( that will not harden it, nothing will." 

I have stated that I am engaged in a perplexing avocation. 
Yes, better calculated to unhinge the mind for a time, and unlink 
idea from idea and make the mind (for a time,) as barren and 
unproductive as a sand-hill than otherwise. Being thus engag- 
ed at present is much against my appearing before you as I 
(without possessing the vanity of the brass of impudence) have 
hopes I could appear, were my time more my own. Self-taught, 
and circumstanced as I am, and faulty as my memory is, I feel 
a cheerfulness to contribute to the edification of those that may 
honor us with their presence as, also those that are desirous of 
disseminating knowledge by the organization of an association 
whose features shall savor of those of a Lyceum. Many quo- 
tations from poetical and prose writers, I am forced to make by 
the aid of memory alone. Books I have few or none at my hands, 
and in many things (however retentive my memory is in others) 
I have to deplore for a time the shortness thereof, a truth I can 
give a greater permanency to, than can my fellows. 

"Tis cduc.itioii forms the common miiiil 
Just as tlic twig is bent llic tree's incliri'it." 



41 

Education ! "Formation of manners in youth." If a youth 
is not blessed with the advantages that many enjoy, that of re- 
ceiving instructions in Academic Institutions or Hall's of Sci- 
ence, he nevertheless can be an educated youth, in proportion to 
his opportunities in the use of books, and his own industry in 
improving his own mind as his own instructor. Some among 
the best men we have ever had within our Republic, were self- 
taught men — the arbiters as it were of their own fortunes — their 
own destinies here. Many of these might now be named, but 
as each will be the subject of a biographical sketch in an after 
lecture, I shall not intrude them upon your attention now. 

The great importance of education, the improvement of the 
mind and the acquirement of useful knowledge is but too little 
studied. The earthly advantages, to say nothing of eternal gain, 
are by far too narrowly viewed, and the labors of developing the 
minds of youth by a constant infusion of knowledge by instruction, 
are by some parents horridly appreciated. They will not instruct 
their children themselves even should they be capable, nor will 
they intrust their children properly to the care of teachers in every 
respect competent to the task and the reason is obvious, they 
know not the value of an education themselves, and they have 
never learned to appreciate it in others. 

Education will at once draw a marked and distinct line between 
the man or woman who leans towards a civil, obliging, kind, 
generous and religious nature and exemplary life of humility and 
justice, and a man or woman made uji of all the heterogeneous 
masses of gruffness, misanthropy, cruelly, injustice, wickedness 
and incurable ignorance. 

Education, developes the resources of the human mind, and 
brings them into full play and brings out all its faculties. By it 
the numerous faculties of the human mind is found to act in con- 
cert even to a perfect harmony of actions. Every rational youth 
ought to possess one common ambition, that of becoming in a 
greater or lesser degree a well read literary man or woman — ought 
to possess a full determination to cultivate the mind and expand, 
polish and strengthen the understanding, and with the good use 
in a proper exercise of acquired knowledge, to better and fortify 
the heart and obtain that peace to the soul that passes all under- 
standing, and which the world cannot give and which the world 
cannot take away. 

"It is the natural tendency of literary studies, by enlivening 
the imagination, and creating a passion for the sublime and beau- 
tiful, to elevate the soul to tlie contemplation of that august Ma- 
JE.STY, from whom every thing that is grand and glorious, has 
emanated." 
6 



42 

The developement of the human mind by the aid of a proper 
educatory system, how pleasing the theme — the minds of youth 
expanding hberally in proportion to the growth of their bodies. 
How appropos the remark, so ofien made when a youth of either 
sex is beheld fetter bound in ignorance, ''^ what a lump of unin- 
telligible matter.^'' 

In countries (Prussia for instance) far, very far behind us in 
the scale of mental and moral improvements, the liberal arts and 
the freedom and genius of our free Institutions, learning would 
seem to be held in a far greater estimation than in our own coun- 
try. All parents are bound by law to place their children under- 
the guardianship of the tutors conducting the elementary schools, 
this, or satisfy ihe officers of justice, "that their education, is 
sufficiently provided for, at home." For a neglect of duty to 
their children, parents, guardians and masters can be and are 
fined and imprisoned at the option of the proper authorities, and 
further, ihey may be cond-emned to hard labor for the benefit of 
the community. 

The human mind is indestructible, and oh how powerful it is, 
when it developes itself in its matchless strength, and rushes 
forth in the unstayed impetuosity of its might, in the ways of 
right, and has perfection in good for its grand object and aim. 

" Hence ^/ie ^nerms of intellectual and moral instruction and 
social intercourse, have a large share in forming the character of 
a nation. The causes which influence the former, also affijct the 
latter; and the state of knowledge," " will enable us to form 
some estimate of the character of a people." 

" The human mind is composed of a number of faculties with 
their appropriate spheres of action ; and that exercise is best cal- 
culated to strengthen, improve, ennoble and beautify it, which 
brings into healthy and vigorous play all its diversified powers." 

How many admirable volumes have been written upon the 
subject of education. How many thousands of stray paragraphs 
have fallen from the pens of the mighty, upon this all important 
subject, paragraphs, beautiful, powprful, weighty and every way 
highly instructive. But alas ! powerful as has been these arrows 
of brilliancy, and straight the aim with which they have been flung- 
from the mighty bows of intellect, against ignorance, they have 
fallen, ere they accomplished their high and holy mission of swift- 
ness and keenness of reproach or of encouragement. 

Fallen ! yes useless, without accomplishing in very many in- 
stances, a solitary conviction tending men and women to the side 
of TRUTH, and their high and imperative duty to the YOUNG. 

The celebrated JJenjamin Rush, M.D. of Philadelphia — the 
learned and accomplished Rush has said " A portion of the Bible 



43 

(of late banished from our schools) should be read by " pupils 
every day, and such questions should be asked, after reading it 
as are calculated to imprint upon their minds the interesting stories 
contained in it. Rosseau has asserted that the great secret of 
education consists in " wasting the time of children profitably." 
There is some truth in this observation. 1 believe we olten im- 
pair their health, and weaken their capacities by imposing studies 
upon them, which are not proportioned to their years. JJut this 
objection does not apply to religious instruction. There are cer- 
tain simple propositions in the Christian religion, which are suit- 
ed in a peculiar manner, to the infant state of reason and moral 
sensibility." Let the infantile perceptions of a child be brought 
into full play without force, but, by gentle leading, in the way 
of a proper instruction and the results noticed, even in an 
infantile mind are glorious. The scriptures themselves, don't 
drive, by dogmatical axioms, don't convey the least idea of a ne- 
cessity for beating its knowledge or principles into the human 
mind or human heart by a harsh and cruel course of procedure 
enacted against its pupils. No ! Reason runs parallel with its 
great and glorious doctrinal truths of right and of salvation. The 
human mind, it is true, is forced into a round of actions often by 
force, or, which is to say, by a law of necessity. Here however 
is a vast difference. We will suppose a case, a man is in the 
greatest possible danger but, with time at the same time to cast 
in his own mind some plan for his escape, propositions crowd upon 
his mind, he reasons, he compares. He is here forced by a law 
of necessity — a law of his nature — self-preservation, to exert every 
faculty of his mind forced by this law, but who shall dare to say, 
that, his will and power of willing a plan of escape, is called into 
requisition against his will. He wills to will, and if so, his will 
is left free. That he may ivill right or that he may icill wrong has 
nothing to do for or against our argument in his case. Our drift 
is to show, that, the human mind ought to be developed and ex- 
panded by gentle means, carrying the will of the person instruct- 
ed along in an approval of the mode and not by any system that 
will oppose will upon the principles of reason, and sour, and dis- 
gust the instructed, for the moment that this is the case, force is 
displayed, and the mind cannot be brought to act as in a som- 
nambulic state against a clear and decided state of the will, in 
which state it is dormant and cannot act with preference or rejec- 
tion, as when the person is from under the influences of somnam- 
bulism. The actions that a somnambulic state of the mind would 
present to a person when under the influences of somnambulism 
and with which the person operated upon w^ould be highly pleased 
or delighted, that same person would shudder at and fly from com- 



44 

mitting when awaice, and the will in its full play would reject 
every mental overture made to it. 

What philosopher of the past would have figured in the great 
deep and unfathomable oceans of science, if he had had another 
course pointed out to him than that one \Yhich he pursued. The 
mind not left free to compare, divide, add, analyze, &c., and the 
will — fretted and clogged by force, and made to receive or reject 
against it own free volitions. How, I ask would philosophers 
(those great ones) who grasping a crude mass of true scientific 
principles, and a great mass of false ones together in the great 
arena of their reservours of thought, have made their deep re- 
searches into the hidden principles and unveiled mysteries of 
nature, and digested those principles and attained the incalcu- 
lable beneficial results with which earth hath been blest, if they 
had been approached by a herculean master with a scourge or 
cudgel, and the attempt made, to heat theii* backs and chafe, their 
minds with the view of arriving at the happy results which they 
were able to obtain upon the principles of reason — upon the prin- 
ciples of right. Why, instead of their being philosophers borne 
along by the powers of will upon the principles of reason, and 
they the instruments to conceive, and accomplish they would 
have been mere cyphers. The instrumentality would have been 
in the cudgel as was the right of voting exhibited to be by Ben- 
jamin Franklin's jackass, in the ass, an extremely low subordi- 
nate and not in its owner, a free and enlightened citizen of our 
happy Republic. The moment that the will is placed in a state 
of subjection — is clogged by force, it becomes unsusceptible of 
being a free agent (on the principles of justice) and undeserving 
of punishment. 

" That education is one of the deepest principles of independ- 
ence, need not to be labored in this assembly. In arbitrary gov- 
ernments, where the people neither make the laws nor choose 
those who legislate, the more ignorance the more peace. But in 
a government where the people fill all the branches of the sover- 
eignty, intelligence is the life of liberty." 

Independence fits the soul of her residence for every noble en- 
terprize of humanity and greatness. Her radiant smile lights up 
celestial ardor in poets and orators, who sound her praises through 
all ages; in legislators and philosophers, who fabricate wise and 
happy governments as dedications to her fame; in patriots and 
heroes, who shed their lives in sacrifice to her divinity. At this 
idea do not our minds swell with the memory of those whose god- 
like virtues have founded her most magnificent temple in Amer- 
ica ? It is easy for us to maintain her doctrines, at this late day, 
>vhen there is but one party on the subject, — an immense people. 



45 

But what tribute shall we bestow, what sacred paean shall we 
raise over the tombs of those who dared, in the face of unrivalled 
power, and within the reach of majesty to blow the blast of free- 
dom throughout a subject continent ? Nor did those biave coun- 
trymen of ours only express the emotions of glory : the nature of 
their principles inspired them with the power of practice ; and 
they olTered their bosoms to the shafts of battle. Bunker's awful 
mount is the capacious urn of their ashes, but the flaming bounds 
of the universe could not limit the flight of their minds. They 
fled to the union of kindred souls ; and those who fell at the straits 
of Thermopyke and those who bled on the heights of Charles- 
town, now reap congenial joys in the fields of the blessed." 

The utility and ^importance of cultivating the mind and im- 
proving those faculties with which the God of nature has endow- 
ed us must appear obvious to every lover of learning — must ap- 
pear highly necessary when we duly consider that in proportion 
as the clouds of ignorance are dissipated by application in the 
study of useful knowledge, in th-e same proportion will our minds 
expand and our stock of ideas be increased. A desire to have 
our mental horizon adorned by the illuminating rays of the sun 
of reason — to have his benign influences shed upon our benightr 
ed minds and to have them sheltered from the wintry blasts of 
ignorance is a desire that should be paramount to every other 
earthly desire. 

Let us all avoid unprofitable deliberations " one half of human 
life is made up of wasted consideration. The highways of the 
world are strewed with the sand of thoughts cast away. The 
events over which we have no control affect our destiny a thous- 
and fold more than the few that we can govern, that while we 
ponder over our decision, fate decides for us, and the game is 
played." 

Education is that series of means by which the human under- 
standing is gradually enlightened and the dispositions of the heart 
are formed and called forth between the earliest infancy and the 
period (be it sooner or later) when the porssessors are to be con- 
Kiidered as qualified to take a part in active life ; for when we cease 
to direct our views to the acquirement of knowledge in Academic 
studies and the formation of new habits upon scholastic principles, 
we act upon the supposition, that the principles acquired, are alto- 
gether sufficient to enable us to pass through life honorably and 
with ability. 

The Athenians and Romans arose by gradation from a state of 
rudeness, ignorance and barbarity to a state of intellectual refine? 
ment, deep and brilliant powers of learning and knowledge. — - 
Their successes in the acquirement of knowledge were so great 



46 

that they became the wonder and admiration of the surrounding 
nations. How did they attain this powerful and wonderful as- 
cendency ? Was it not by an industrious application in the study 
of those subjects which alone could enlarge and exalt the human 
mind. How many in more modern times have arrived from at- 
tainment unto attainment until they became possessors of this 
treasure which all the wealth of India could not buy from a knowl- 
edge loving possessor — a treasure which the wise of all ages have 
denominated the principal thing, viz : Wisdom, or that cultiva- 
tion of or enlargement of the r^ynd and understanding which will 
enable us to see clearly and understand perfectly those things 
which concern our present and future well being and happy are 
they who attain to this knowledge. It is more precious than ru- 
bies, its brilliancy more bright than that of polished gold and all 
other desires must fall vastly short when compared with the de- 
sire to possess this never fading gem of heavenly splendor and 
origin — knowledge. Knowledge ! It must without doubt be 
denominated the ornament of youth and the staff and comforter of 
old age. It throws an additional lustre on prosperity, it is a 
source and consolation in adversity. It is then that consolation 
may be derived from it. As the cooling streamlet in the barren 
desert revives the fainting spirits of the weary traveller, so is 
knowledge the source of never failing gratifications to the human 
mind in a high state of mental culture. Who among us would be 
willing to sit down and become an idle spectator of the all pow- 
erful march of the human mind and the lofty towerings of Genius, 
without feeling a compunctious throb as a silent monitor upbraid- 
ing us with this waste of time and abuse of priveleges. 

" The education of our children," said John Adams to his wife, 
"is never out of my mind. Train them to virtue. Habituate them 
to industry, activity and spirit. Make them consider every vice 
as shameful and unmanly. Fire them with an ambition to be 
useful. Make them disdain to be destitute of any useful or or- 
namental knowledge." 

The human mind in infancy is incapable of receiving or re- 
taining many useful ideas, and when arrived at the years of ma- 
turity (with very many) the brittle thread of life has already spun 
out half its length, reminding us that this is the season of reflec- 
tion — reminding us that we have been created for more noble 
purposes than merely to enjoy earth's pleasing scenes — remind- 
ing us that when called to mingle with the clods of the valley 
our minds must ascend to him that gave them, and who has pro- 
mised to rejoin them to their native tenement in the beauty of 
holiness if found acceptable in his sight through the justifying 
righteousness of a Redeemer on the resurrection morn, the spring 
season of eternity. 



47 

The human mind is susceptible of the greatest improvement, 
and may become as productive in the growth of useful knowledge 
as spring in her distribution of herbage and flowers. The mind 
guided by reason is capable of reasoning on the most abstruse 
subjects. Man is a rational being, endowed with reasoning fac- 
ulties and when a principle is presented to his mind aided by 
his reasoning powers, he is generally able to determine the truth 
and propriety of it. Aided by imagination, the human mind can 
take a retrospective view of the past, can travel back to the source 
of time, to the period when that time sounded his first march 
onward. He can behold this mighty globe emerging out of the 
dark abyss or universal chaos by the mandate of deity. Can be- 
hold nature's bounds unalterably fixed — the light dissipating the 
darkness — the land and seas appearing — the mountains rising 
in all their mighty strength rearing their lofty summits towards 
Heaven — majestic rivers, flowing in uninterrupted grandeur and 
silence, rolling their mighty waters-as their first tribute in pay- 
ment to their mighty sovereigns the different oceans, and at the 
same time can behold the softly murmuring rivulets meandering 
through the many and widely expansive forests of earth. There 
he can behold the sun, great luminary of the day preparing to 
commence his first journey in the Heavens. There also the moon 
fair empress of night casting her first oblique rays upon the earth. 
There also the glittering hosts marshalled in Heaven's dome, 
moving in their onward regularity in all their nightly splendor 
and magnificence. Here upon earth he can behold herbs and 
plants clothing the ground in a robe of finest green, studded and 
variegated with inlay work of most exquisite snow white and 
vermeil bloom. ^Vhat next? Why he can behold our first pa- 
rents appearing in all their pristine glory, excellence and love- 
liness — man appearing created in the likeness of his God with 
a countenance upright, and walking with his Creator who de 
clares him lord and sovereign of "their newly created world — 
walking in innocence before his God who confers upon him his 
Heavenly benediction — can trace him to Eden's blooming gar 
den and there behold him enjoying the favor and friendship of 
his God — can behold the companion of his future life in all her 
moral and superior excellence, in all her beauty and Heavenly 
begotten innocence. Superior beings beheld this new creation, 
this new accession to existence with amazement and delight. 
The stars of the morning sang together, and all the sons of God 
shouted for joy. 

By imagination, man can behold the windows of Heaven open- 
ed and the fountains of the great deep broken up — the earth 
involved in darkness. Terror and dismay, winds and storms 



48 

stalking forth in all their fury, and Heaven's artillery playing off 
a well directed fire on a condemned world. By imagination, man 
can behold cities tumbling" to ruin, burying their inhabitants deep 
beneath their lofty towers and impregnable walls. Can behold 
and hear the awful screams of men and women as they are beheld 
fleeing in search of safety, can hear the death shrieks of those that 
are perishing in the universal waste of waters. From viewing 
these he can turn his eyes towards the Ark of safety, and behold 
it outriding the tremendous commotions of a dark, wdd and wa- 
tery abyss. Sometimes carried aloft to scale the mountains height 
and mingle with the clouds. Sometimes descending deeply en- 
gulphed in the vortex or chasm below and lost as it were amid 
the contending elements, never to arise again. By imagination, 
llian can behold the patriarch Noah putting forth his messenger, the 
dove, emblem of innocence — can behold it return without a place 
whereon to rest, can behold this messenger subsequently return- 
ing bearing the olive branch, insignia of peace in her mouth, 
can behold this great repository of animal life high stranded up- 
on Arrarat's lofty summit and the waters fast retreating never 
again earth's surface to cover, or its inhabitants to destroy. — 
By imagination, man can behold the ethereal Bow placed in the 
cloud as a pledge of God's faithfulness in his promise, and as 
a proof of the immutability of Noah's God of deliverance — the 
rainbow with its resplendent beauties of colour, colours not less 
resplendent now — not less beautiful — not less grand or imposing 
even at this late period, than when its bright hues and tints first met 
the eyes of the patriarch Noah. The rainbow on which we have 
so often gazed with admiration and delight. By imagination, 
man can behold the whole earth in the quiet possession of 
Noah and his family, and an universal serenity pervading all 
created nature. A quiet that might be likened to an universal 
sabbath, bland and serene, with nought to be heard save the 
songs and adorations of an inspired Noah and family rising on 
the gentle winds towards Heaven, and the silent praises of na- 
ture issuing forth in all the admonitional majesty of created pur- 
pose from every river, mountain, valley, plain and hill. Then 
broke forth the sun in the majesty of his strength, to enliven 
the scene — the moon fair empress of night followed to bless with 
her peerless brightness the lonely voyagers in their transit to earth 
from the bosom of mighty waters. "Then the gentle evening 
star came out in the quiet blue Heaven, and looked down upon 
earth to see whatever should happen in her watch," — to behold 
and admire the untieigned gratitude of Heaven's patriarch-pil- 
grim fiithcr, and be witness to his unearthly nocturnal devotions 
to his God. 



49 

Happy Noah ! Happy men of God ! Prophets, inspired sons 
of God ! The strength of the living God their strength, and all 
iear banished from the heart. How happy most assuredly must 
be the soul still under the droppings of redeeming grace — still 
within hearing of the still small voice of the Great I AM — still 
in communion with the enlightening spirit of Heavenly inspira- 
tion. O luxury incomparable. Luxiny too lofty and extatic to 
be enjoyed rapturously by the minds, hearts and souls of finite 
beings here below, in the present existing construction of poor 
fallen nature. 

"Life has its moments of strength and bloom — its bright mo- 
ments of inspiration, in which the human artist, the painter of 
earthly life, seizes on and utters what is purest, most beautiful 
and divine. If, in our human life, we acted only then, if then 
all sacrifices were made, all victories won, there would be but 
little difficulty in life. But the difficult part is to preserve through 
a long course of years, the flame which has been kindled by in- 
spiration only ; to preserve it while the storms come and go, 
while the everlasting dust — rain of the moment falls and falls ; 
to preserve it still and uniform, amid the unvarying changing of 
unvaried days and nights. To do this, strength irom above is 
required ; repeated draughts from the fountain of inspiration, both 
for the great and the small — for all laborers on earth." 

By imagination the mind of man can soar aloft and range the 
illimitable fields of space, far, far beyond where the human eye 
has travelled — to where other suns and other moons beam with 
ineffable effulgence — where stars innumerable present themselves 
to view, and farther, to where he can lose sight of stars and suns 
and moons, and wander into the boundless oceans of eternal 
space and there set bounds to creation, and then ask the question, 
are these the bounds of creation ? There ask the question and 
imagination and reason will answer, take the years of the lives of 
all the successive generations of beings that have lived upon this 
earth multiplied by their number, and that amount multiplied by 
the generations which now inhabit and the generations which 
shall inhabit the world in the years of the future and that again 
multiplied by itself in miles, will be but a step towards calculating 
or measuring the extent of created space. What is like to the 
Almighty's wisdom, it is higher than heaven and deeper than 
hell, what can we do ? By what numbers can we state the length 
and breadth, heighth and depth of created space! Vast and 
boundless creation, w"ho is able to set land marks to limit thy 
immeasurable extent. 

A desire to improve the mind is certainly no criminal desire, 
but a desire which deserves the highest encomium. However 
7 



50 

arduous the task, if undertaken with zeal and persevered in with 
a due degree of ardency, There is every reason to hope that suc- 
cess will await an enterprize so laudable, honorable and service- 
able to society. It is true, adversity acts as a great counterpoize 
and has a very great tendency to hang all our exertions in equi- 
librium wuth our means, but, ihis so far from discouraging us, 
ought to cause a redoubled exertion on our part ! Skill in any 
art is acquired by frequent attempts and frequent attempts will 
make more easy and plain the paths of study. Unless we aim at 
perfection we never can attain to it. 

To what heights of perfection have many persons arrived at 
in knowledge under all the disadvantages of birth and ill fortune 
by their unwearied diligence and application in study. Men too, 
•who had to record their ideas on other materials than paptr, when 
without the means to procure it. Are we to grope our way in 
the dark and that contentedly too, at such an immense distance 
behind those, whose advantages were little better than our own 
without making some advances toward the improvement of our 
intellectual faculties. Although adversity may blow a severe gale 
and yet a far more severe one, it is but an act of justice to our- 
selves that we endeavor to possess our minds in peace, calm and 
unruffled. Although the stormy winds of poverty may take away 
in a great measure that zest or relish of life for a length of time 
and cause life's pleasures to become vapid and insipid, the satur- 
nian clusters of an intellectual harvest and autumn of fulness will 
be ours to enjoy eventually as the reward of steady and unyield- 
ing perseverance. That learning and knowledge, which are so 
desirable, are able to make easy and light our burden and will af- 
ford the mind numberless comforts and gratifications. We do 
know that adversity does place barriers in our way, barriers al- 
raost insuperable, and if a desire for cultivating the mind does not 
have a permanent seat in our minds and hearts when thus situated, 
it is not to be expected, that it would have if we possessed all the 
Peruvian wealth that ever has been wafted to our shores. 

In the cultivation of our minds in order to our becoming schol- 
ars, many principles are involved. One grand principle however 
and which should present itself constantly to our view and by 
which we should be governed, is a knowledge of our want of 
knowledge. This leads me to an observation made by a distin- 
guished scholar. " Tlie first year (says he) that I went to school 
I knew all things, the second I knew something, but the last 
year I am free to confess I knew nothing." This is a very rank 
bud of ignorance which often enwraps the mind of man — a belief 
conceited as to possessed abilities. Nothing is more common 
than for a coxcomb dandy jack to swell likeiEsop's Frog in en- 



51 

deavoring to equal the Ox in his laboring to convince the world 
that he can scan material and immaterial creation. 

We generally find it true with men of great learning and abili- 
ties and who possess a great knowledge of persons and things 
that they are willing to make the acknowledgment that the more 
they study, the more they iiave to study, ere they can arrive at any 
thing like perfection in knowledge — that the more they know, the 
more ignorant they find themselves, or in other words, the more 
wide becomes the expanse of knowledge and wisdom as it is 
spread out before the eye of the mind. 

On the other hand, how often do we see ignorant persons bask- 
ing in the sun shine of prosperity, unconcious of inability, setting 
out in the world as proficients in knowledge, ready at all times 
and on all occasions to attempt an illustration of doctrines and 
principles of which they know nothing, or if they do, have merely 
acquired a superficial knowledge of and are not only misguiding 
but in fact are misguided. Confining themselves to a narrow 
range of thoughts and to a superficial idea of things in general, 
merely for the purpose of figuring in society, skipping like the 
idle bee from flower to flower, scarcely waiting long enough to 
taste their nectarine juices — for the purpose of figuring often in 
female society, for oneybo^ of the kind, successful in a reception 
with an amiable and discerning young woman, twenty, yes more, 
go supperless to bed, which is to say, they go home disappointed, 
whistling or trying to whistle consolation by the way and pre- 
pare themselves for settling down with those of a cast with them- 
selves and truly more their equals. The wise and amiable of the 
sex are not always so void of perception as to be caught with chaff. 

Shall we find such conduct as this, flowing as the result arising 
from the cultivation of mind ? I apprehend not. We ought to ac- 
quire as perfect a knowledge of one branch of education as possi- 
ble before wc attempt the acquirement of another. 

What but the cultivation of mind, produced such living worthies 
as those, whose names are handed down from sire to son, the re- 
cord of whose transcendent worth gilds the pages of history — 
the signers of the Declaration of Independence — the hard fight- 
ing life sacrificing yeomanry — the framers of our glorious Con- 
stitution and others not less eminent. Was it not the cultivation 
of a mind highly gifted of nature, that gave birth to the daring en- 
terprize of an intrepid and magnanimous Columbus. None but 
a mind bold and inquiring, enriched by studying nature's laws 
could have framed so hazardous an entcrprize — an enterprize 
-which has given birth to two Republics, Republics in which 
Tyranny has been seen retreating in front of the grand armies of 
liberty. Republics, in which are to be found all that is desirable 



52 

in life. Republics, over which the broad stripes of Freedom and 
Independence are waving with unceasing splendor. Republics, 
where the mind of man can range free and unrestrained (except 
by those barriers which his Maker has established) as the winds 
ot heaven. Republics in which we can behold the desert bloom- 
ing as the rose and where, instead of the thorn and the thistle we 
can see cities, towns and villages emerging. Where instead of 
the savage aborigines that once inhabited our forests we can now 
see civilized and enlightened beings prosecuting schemes of ac- 
tive life. 

What was it but the cultivation of mind that gave us the man 
in whom was blended all the endearing qualities of father, hus- 
band, brother and friend, of a statesman, a hero and a sage — 
Washington ! the ever to be remembered father of our country. 
WASHINGTON! a name to which millions of grateful beings 
are willing to do homage. A name which the lisping babe en- 
tombs deep in its heart. A name held in respectful remembrance 
even by the enemies of our common country. A name which 
generations yet unborn will hail with pleasing emotions. Follow 
him through every lane of life. View him in childhood drinking 
deep of the crystal fountain of knowledge. View him in the field 
heroic and brave, yet mild and humane. View him on many oc- 
casions calling into action those energies of mind which alone 
could arrest the progress of a belligerant foe. He conducted our 
country through the many trials and perils of a devastating war. 
Was it not a highly cultivated mind that enabled him to draw 
his sword and to wield it so successfully and gloriously in her de- 
fence ? 

Washington! who was enabled by the guidance of a superin- 
tending Providence to conduct her at last in peace and safety to 
her empire seat of glory among the nations of the earth. Wash- 
ington ! w^ho trampled ambition nobly underneath his feet, dis- 
dained a crown and who wdien he had toiled in his country's ser- 
vice for her glorious advancement, wealth and prosperity as a 
republic — until his head became blossomed with age descended 
to the tomb (to join the mighty patriotic dead that had on battle- 
fields sacrificed their lives for their country,) leaving a nation to 
mourn his loss and to embalm his memory with their tears. 

Every man it is true, cannot be an " admirable Crichton," 
but every man endowed with rationality has the power of improv- 
ing his own mind greatly and of enlarging its capacities by indus- 
try in mental cultnre. There never was a manor a woman how- 
ever lofty the genius, towering their minds or astounding their 
abilities or mental productions, but what, with a greater indus- 
try proportionate to opportunities could have soared to a height 



53 

immensely higher than was ever exhibited by any one man or 
woman since earth was first called forth into a glorious syste- 
matic order, out of its chaotic state. 

From the course of life led by Crichton you will be led to ex- 
claim with me, on what Arrarat's unattainable summit would 
that unheard of intellectual ark ofscientificresearch haverested mid 
the eternal lloodings of thought — of mind, had he lived to have 
ripened that mind by verging on the confines of but the sixtieth 
year of his age. A man for whom his contemporary opponents 
did acknowledge, "that he gave proofs of knowledge beyond 
the reach of man, and that it would require a hundred years 
without eating or sleeping of an ordinary mind to attain to the 
knowledge which he possessed." 

James Crichton, was born in the town of Perth, in Scotland, 
1560, and was murdered by his own pupil Vincentio di Gonza- 
ga, who was son to the duke of Mantua a town of Italy in 1582. 
"His father was lord advocate of Scotland, in Queen Mary's 
reign, from 1561 to 1573; and his mother the daughter of Sir 
James Stuart, was allied to the family which then filled the Scot- 
tish throne. 

Thus perished the admirable Crichton at the young age of twen- 
ty-two, Crichton the Solomon of the fifteenth century. Crich- 
ton, one of the greatest prodigies in uninspired nature (by a Di- 
vine spirit) that ever the world produced. 

A writer justly observes that, "knowledge is a treasure of 
which study is the /cct/," but Milton most "beautifully styles the 
righteousness of Christ," 

" the golden key. 



That opes the palace of eternity." 

What a glorious mind had been bestowed upon Crichton. — 
How great had been his studies, for he must have applied him- 
self closely to study from his earliest youth, and how well cul- 
tivated no doubt had that mind been by earnest, anxious and af- 
fectionate preceptors. In the history of this man (to say little 
of others) what a lesson to the young of both sexes. They can 
behold to what an inconceivable height the human mind is sus- 
ceptible of being carried by a sedulous application to books and 
to study ; can behold how vastly great can be its rich, rare, beau- 
tiful, lofty and beneficial endowments at the hand of nature and 
nature's blessed God. What a lesson, the ill directed ambition 
of Crichton. To what a height it is asked, would the mind 
of Crichton have soared had he lived, and had that God for his God 
been constantly with him, whose storehouses are filled to overflow- 
ing with gifts inexhaustible and glorious. Gifts, the giving of which 



54 

impoverisheth him not, and the withholding of which enricheth 
him not. If he gave proofs of knowledge beyond the reach of 
man at the young age of twenty, what with perfection in all good 
as his grand aim — what with the Lord God as his blessing God and 
sure defence, and his Christ the Rock of Eternal Ages as his 
guide and constant protector and helper — what woukl his un- 
fathomable knowledge been like at the age of sixty. A lofty 
pyramid of intellectual grandeur immeasurable by the sons of 
men. Wonderful dispenser of intellectual gifts and endowments 
of mind art thou, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, one God. Oh ! 
ill directed ambition how very destructive art thou to man. 

Those Parents and Teachers bound to, and that undertakes to 
develope the resources of the human mind and to cultivate both 
mind and heart, with skill and ability, can they in their conse- 
quential torn fool severities, cruel as they are unjust, can they 
cultivate either mind or heart ? Impossible. Their own loud and 
boisterous hrawlings and caterwailings are amply sufficient to not 
only produce opposite results to those intended, but results, dire- 
ful, dreadful and calamitous in their consequences. It is a vul- 
gar saying but no less applicable than it is true ; trot father and 
'pace mother the child must hobble. Will this not apply, and well, 
to many of our youth destroying " school-masters" and school- 
mistresses ? verily it will, and they are as welcome to it as I fully 
intend it for their lasting benefit and the benetit of juveniles un- 
der them ; juveniles whom I would love to wrest from under the 
guardianship of such puffed up pretenders to that art which right- 
ly exercised, will cultivate and expand the mind, enlarge and en- 
rich the understanding, and school and better the heart. 

Here let it be said that the influences of a competent and God- 
ly mother in the education of youth very far surpasses the abili- 
ties and influences of fathers and tutors. Their culturing hand 
can never be justly compared with that of a fond, faithful, com- 
petent and holy mother. It is the mother after all who may be 
said to fashion and mould the heart and its every affection. It 
is the mother after all, that makes the man and that sits as earthly 
arbitress generally^ over his destiny here and hereafter. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, humble as are my pretensions to learn- 
ing and as are my abilities to saunter along in the pleasant, hap- 
py and flowery walks of polite literature, I must notwithstanding 
raise my voice in favor of a mother's gentle, but powerful and effi- 
cient culturing hand. I owe it to a fond, faithful and God-fear- 
ing mother that I am what I am. Blest with a kind, indulgent 
and for the most part exemplary father, one not only capable to 
instruct as respects the theory of riglit, but able to instruct upon 
the score of his being a practical man in the ways of right; yet 



55 

still to my mother as my instructress — to her culturing hand — her 
educational instructions over those of father, teachers (these how- 
ever were few) and preachers (except the patriotic heaven fired 
and noble Dr. Davidson who was my patriotic school-master, an 
eminent Divine of the olden-day school) I am by far the most in- 
debted. She it was that gave, to ray mind its first bias. She it 
was that cultivated my heart and its affections, and shaped (if I 
may use the expression) my course, and to her instrumentality 
alone I owe the enjoyment of the happiest and proudest day of 
my whole life, that of standing under the star spangled Eagle 
banner of ray country's bright and exalted glory — along side of 
the mast on whose top was flung proudly to the breeze, the Co- 
lumbian Flag, the flag of the free, the flag of the brave when sail- 
ing near and under the cannon of a British fortress in 1814. For 
that glorious privilege — that proud and happy day's enjoyment 
of my childhood, I am altogether indebted to my mother. Al- 
though not claiming to be a Samuel myself, I claim for that 
mother the honor of being the IIannah* of my country who dedi- 
cated me from the womb to my COLUMBIA, and its eternal 
PRINCE and GOD. 

Of her patriotic feelings as a woman it becomes me to speak. 
Her prayers to Heaven were constant for success to attend the 
American arms during the last war. That she was patriotic the 
following incidents out of raany will fully prove. 

When the Pennsylvania troops marched from Cumberland, 
Franklin and Adams counties. Pa., and encamped for the night, 
seven miles north of Pittsburg, a great snow laid upon the ground 
in that region of country and the weather was extremely cold. 
My father's residence was at the distance of a mile and a quar- 
ter from the Franklin road and from where the troops had formed 
their encampment. 

My father started over to the road in order to make search for 
some of his acquaintances, and take them to his house. My 
mother permitted my eldest brothers Robert, and myself to go 
over to the encampment, and bade us to bring all we could get 
to come along over home with us, stating that she would enter- 
tain them in some way or other and be able to make thera far 
more comfortable than they could be in their tents, such weath- 
er as then existed. We returned home before night and by our 
addition to the number ray father had taken horae, my brother 
and myself swelled it to sixteen or seventeen in all. 

My mother in expectation of having a number of patriotic 
guests had busied herself in making preparation from the time 
we had left horae until we returned again, and was not long be- 

*Tlic niaiik-ii uaiuc ol'thc aiitlior's mother before marriage was Hannah Sinilh. 



56 

fore she sealed the above number of soldiers at her table, which 
I know well was spread with not only the best in the house, but 
the best that could be procured within a convenient distance in 
the neighborhood. 

After supper she made beds for them on the lower floor of the 
house, 5ind had wood provided and the fires kept up the whole 
night. After her soldier guests retired to rest, she set herself 
to work and during the whole night she baked bread, boiled, 
roasted and fryed fowls, fish and meats of different kinds, and 
by daylight in the morning she had made an equal division of 
her night's labors, and had plenty of victuals stowed away in 
each soldier's knapsack. This done, instead of seeking rest in 
sleep (for she closed not her eyes the livelong night) she com- 
menced her labors anew, that of baking, boiling and stewing, 
and at an early hour in the morning seated her guests again at 
table in their partaking of her breakfast, after which, she sent 
them off to camp wuth her blessing made hallowed with the tears 
of a patriotic mother. 

Some of these were in the hottest of actions in Canada, but 
were restored to their homes by the mercies of God, ever rich in 
their execution. 

When my father (shortly after) "was about to move ontd'camp, 
my mother would not hear to a separation, but, upon one condi- 
tion, and that was, that myself then a small boy, should accom- 
pany him. He consented, and when we started she placed nie 
up with her own hands behind my father upon the same horse 
with himself, and in this way, I rode the distance of one hundred 
and thirty miles to camp, bad as the condition of the roads were, 
on the frontiers after the breaking up of the winter. 

If I am to be viewed as passing encomiums upon my mother 
without a motive other than that of, an eagerness to praise her, let 
me go one step further, and hold her up as an ensample to all other 
mothers in their high and imperitive duties to their children — to 
their country and to their God. 

To my mother I am indebted — that my heart is better than those 
of other people I do not pretend to state, for I am like the best 
of Divines, not a whit better than I should be. But of my mother's 
labors I am about to speak, and not of my own goodness. Her 
early ambition was to reach my heart in its infantile state, coeval 
with my lisping of her name — Mother , I possessed at her hands 
a knowledge of many portions of scripture and with my first recol- 
lections, I recollect perfectly well, that among those portions was, 
the beautiful, sweet and highly pri^^ed twenty third psalm of David, 
(Rouse's version) and Avhich I have never yet forgotten at any 
period of my life, since my mind was first stored with it by one 
of the most fond and faithful of mothers in my earliest infancy. 

U i n O Q ^ 



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HECKMAN 
BINDERY INC. |§| 

# DEC 88 
N. MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 



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